Poached eggs on toast

Poached eggs on toast have long been one of my favorite meals.  Our hens are laying again after a 6-week period of no eggs.  Some of our girls stopped laying in late October or November, meaning that they took over 3 months of vacation.  It's about time they started paying their rent again.  Not only are we eating our own eggs instead of storebought ones, I'm able to sell eggs again.

Hint... hint... if any of my Tacoma readers want naturally nested, cage-free, free-range, humanely raised eggs from hens with names, let me know.  At $4/dozen they're less than at the closed-for-the-season Broadlway farmers market.

And to you midwesterners selling your eggs for $2/dozen, shush. This is the city.

Anyway, poached eggs are simple and quick to make.  You can go from conceptualization to digestion in maybe 8 minutes.  With the egg already perched on top of the toast, there's no chance of that delicious, runny yolk going to waste.  Just a little salt and pepper makes this the perfect meal.

Poached eggs
Eggs
Toast

Bring water to a low boil (hot enough so that it bubbles but isn't violently boiling) in a saucepan.  Crack your eggs into a small bowl or cup.  Slowly tip your cup into the water and allow the egg to slide in.  Since the water is on a low boil, the egg shouldn't go far. 

Some people swear by the swirling water method, which I think is pretty silly.  Don't bother.

Cook your egg to the desired doneness.  For me this took maybe 3-4 minutes.  I've always loved runny, goopy egg yolks.

Scoop the egg out of the water with a slotted spoon and serve on hot toast with salt, pepper, and/or hot sauce.  Heck, go crazy and dump some hollandaise on there if you need the extra calories in your diet.

Bread: Poulsbo Bread
Eggs: from our yard, I think Beaker & Dozer laid these

UPDATED around 5:20 p.m. - Friends have been asking me on my personal Facebook page how I did this.  [shrug]  I've never had poached eggs go wrong so it never occurred to me that they could.  I think that the key lies in a low cooking temperature.  Don't let your water come to a full boil.  See this link for pictures of water at various cooking temps.

Something my dad always does, which I never do anymore, is to submerge the entire egg (in shell) into a pot of boiling water for roughly 30 seconds.  His eggs always turned out well.  In retrospect I think it may function to coagulate the egg white a bit, helping it stay together in the water while being poached.