The Make-Ahead Egg Trick That Will Change Brunch Forever
Culinary School: Week 2 (of 12 weeks)
Last Week’s Diary: How I Rediscovered the Paring Knife
My go-to brunch item always involves eggs: either soft scrambled or poached, with various sides of greens, a little bacon, and maybe some potatoes or toast. When making brunch for a big group of people, however, I always imagined poached eggs would be tricky to pull off because I didn’t think you could make them ahead of time.
This week in culinary school I was proven wrong. Here’s the a make-ahead egg trick that kind of blew my mind.
Mhmm, that’s right, you can make poached eggs ahead of time. This is one of those restaurant tricks that I was truly shocked to learn. It seemed to defy all logic and reason that I previously had about eggs and breakfast. Needless to say I was thrilled.
It’s actually quite easy: after poaching the egg you take it out with a slotted spoon and put it in an ice bath. When the egg has cooled you can take off any wisps of egg white with your paring knife. After that you simply return the poached egg to the ice bath and put it in the fridge. The egg will be OK to use for up to two days in the fridge, but best just overnight.
When you’re ready to eat the egg, you put it back in a simmering pot of water for about a minute and it’s ready to serve. Ta-da! Have you ever tried this?
Other Things We Did This Week in Class:
STOCKS: We made some seriously delicious veal, fish, and chicken stock.
SAUCES: We made quite a few sauces like hollandaise and bechmal, and also mayonnaise (3 different ways!).
Next week is all about salad – stay hungry!
After dreaming about culinary school for the last five years, I finally signed up for a course this summer at the International Culinary Center in New York. The course, “Culinary Techniques,” is a three month class that meets two nights a week, and focuses on classic culinary traditions and methods like knife skills, stock-making, classic recipes, and some pastry