Sous-vide poached egg

One of the tricks I learned from commercial restaurants was how they make the perfect sous-vide poached egg, so it looks like the white of a perfectly hard boiled egg but when you cut into it.

Now normally I used to boil the egg to cook the white for a few mins, and then put it in the sous vide at 63C to perfectly cook the yolk.  But the problem is they are devilishly difficult to peel and at least for me only 1 in 5 look perfect and the rest look like they were gnawed from the shell.

Forget about the yolk for now, we know how to cook that perfectly 63C for 45 mins.  But how do we cook the whites so we can peel the egg perfectly.

The trick I learned is to sacrifice the loose white.

Now an egg has 3 layers of protein that each cook at different rates.  Inside the shell is the loose white which is a watery version of the next layer which is the tight white which is enveloped in it’s own membrane, and inside the tight white is obviously the yolk membrane and the yolk.

So What I do is cook the egg backwards.  Cook the yolk first, 63C for 45 mins.  Then break the shell letting the liquid lose white drain off  and pouring the membrane enclosed tight white into boiling water to harden up.

Making for the perfect table theater as the egg is cut into and the yolk perfectly sauces the dish.

Print Recipe

Sous-vide poached egg

Course

Breakfast

Cuisine

Modernist

Cook Time

45 mins

Servings

Ingredients

• eggs

Course Breakfast Cuisine Modernist Cook Time 45 mins Servings Ingredients eggs

Instructions

1. Sous-vide your eggs at 63C, this will cook the yolk to be runny but cooked, the white will not be hard but will be opaque. If you cook for 45 mins the cooking temperature will be able to penetrate the egg shell and the contents so the center of the egg will be at the cooking temperature.

   
2. Remove the eggs and run in cold water so you can handle them easily.

   
3. Gently crack a small window in the wall of the shell of an egg and gently pour it into a bowl. The loose white will run freely and we will be discarding that. We are trying to keep the outer membrane of the tight white intact.

   
4. Using a large spoon gently remove the intact tight white containing the yolk.

   
5. Add the tight white containing the cooked yolk to the pot for 1 minute to firm up the tight white of the egg.

   
6. Retrieve with a large spoon and plate (this example some of the tight white was lost in the boiling but the egg still looked acceptable)