Silicone Poaching Cups.
Okay, who on OFF has tried these newish individual Silicone Poaching Cups?
I bought 4 a couple of months ago and decided this morning to do Poached Egg on Wholemeal Toast for breakfast for HWMO and myself.
I took them out of the drawer, washed and dried them first (don't know who else had handled them before they got to me)I placed 3 of them on the bar and following the instructions, greasing the inside of the cups with a little butter before cracking 3 eggs into them and sprinkling them with a tiny amount of salt and black pepper.
I then put on a largish saucepan with boiling water that had been filled 1/4 of the way up. That is when the problems started! Instead of having the cups on a tray right next to the saucepan, I'd forgotten that I had left the cups with the eggs on the bar. I went to pick up the first one to place in the saucepan when the sleeve of my cardigan caught the edge of one of the other cups and over it went spilling the whole raw egg onto the bar top. (40p went into my swearbox later!) Okay, I thought, don't let it get to you, so after clearing up the mess and wiping everywhere down, I cracked another egg into the cup and ever so carefully, walked over to the cooker carrying one cup at a time and gently did as instructed, lowered it into the boilding water.
Have you ever tried lowering something that feels just like a wobbly piece of rubber into bubbling, scalding water with heat like a furnace, trying to ensure that you do as the instructions say...lay it gently on top of the water without a drop touching the egg inside this slippery beggar? believe me, it's almost impossible! I managed to get two of them in without burning my hands and the water not touching them, but with the third one (water on medium heat as advised) although I laid it into the water gently, water still got into that cup, so by the time I put the lid on the saucepan and turned the timer on for a perfect poached egg with set white and soft yolk, the white that had managed to get into MY poached egg had blended in beautifully with the water and had reached the top of the saucepan and was now white bubbles out of the side of the lid!!!(remember, this is not in simmering water as one would when poaching an egg directly into the water, it is on medium with a real bubble.)
Oh come on, I thought, why me? I've done everything they advised. All this bother for a flipping poached egg.
To cut it short, HWMO had 2 perfect poached eggs and Moi binned hers and had Toast and Marmalade instead.
It really wasn't worth it. In future, I'll stick to Boiled, Fried, Scrambled or Omelette.
Have you tried them at all?