Re: Eggsplosions

They SHOULD work by surrounding the egg with a (porous) Faraday cage and having water inside so that thee egg cooks my boiling, not my microwave energy.

Exploding suggests the Faraday cage was not secure or there was no water.

Ultimately I found them fiddly and hard to time and went back to water in a saucepan on the Aga top.

No not in the instructions. Sounds as if I should have?

Wouldn't a Faraday Cage have to be metal so not to be used in a Microwave?

Poaching is normally done outside the shell, in some sort of silicone cup. There are egg boilers for producing hard or soft boiled eggs, my wife has one which seems to work OK. No need to prick. She likes it enough to have bought a four-egg version, which she hasn't tried yet.

Timing is something to learn, and of course varies slightly with the freshness of the egg.

Yes, but its solid metal - usually aluminium - with holes. I refects the power.

And if it has just come out of the fridge!>

During an idle time many years ago I thought I'd try cooking an egg in its shell in a microwave, despite warnings on various websites that it would be problematical. I tried it on 50% power for a few minutes, but when I broke the shell it was still very runny inside, and not properly cooked. So I gave another egg somewhat longer the next time. It exploded inside the microwave and blew the door open, breaking the catch which holds the door closed.

Fortunately there wasn't much mess outside the microwave, and that inside was easily cleaned off, as it wasn't burnt on like you'd get with a frying pan. The microwave wasn't otherwise damaged. I didn't bother trying to get the timing right again.

Problem is that runny yolk means cooking from the outside. Typically using steam

Now these poachers seem to rely on steam from the egg itself. I think that is utter crap.

But if I made a lot of poached eggs I'd get what me mum had back in the day, Something like this

boiled kettle water on the stove...

Mine brought it to the boil. tossed in a nob of butter and then a cracked egg

I'd still do the same.

But if I wanted poached eggs I'd use some of the massive store of Ex Waitrose pâté ramekins I have. in a deep shallow pan of water, which I also have... I am about to throw my air fryer out as bing essentially very little different from a AGA top oven, and thats due to get re-lit shortly..

Really, special purpose gadgets are s*it unless you use them every day...they just clutter up the place.

I remember I had - and still have - a 30 year old blender which my Ex scorned in favour of some NutriBollox or something. Which broke, so she bought another one. Same with the bloody Dysons.

Back with all Numatic gear now...

And a minute at a time is way too much. Try 10secs and wait 10 secs and check and repeat, at lest after the initial minute.

Thats how I make scrambled egg anyhow.

Tim W

The NutriBullets are actually built fairly well, American engineering rather than Chinese, but they need cleaning every few years. Various powdered stuff drops into the three motor switch triggers and eventually jams them. Ours is twelve years old now, and been cleaned once in that time.

We do also have a very old Kenwood two-whisk hand mixer, and one of the fancy new hand blenders, all get used for different jobs.

The usual advice is to always prick the yolk when microwaving an egg. Am very surprised if the instructions didn't mention this. On the other hand, if the gadget came from China then it might not be so unexpected.

This is not how the vast majority of microwave egg "poachers" work.

And does such a thing even exist for poached rather than boiled eggs (i.e. not in the shell)?

-- Richard

Poached eggs are one of Senior Management’s favourite breakfasts and I have tried several methods to produce them - including with a uWave.

Those involving the uWave sometimes advise pricking the Yoke. This seems to be when the method involves less or almost no poaching liquid ( several methods seem to be variations on the theme of using water + vinegar as a poaching fluid, just less of it compared to dropping the egg contents into a pan of ‘swirling’ water+ vinegar).

I have settled on using silicone rubber cups. I smear them with butter. Bring pan of water to a gentle boil, float the cups in it, break the eggs into the cups. Pop a lid on the pan and leave for about 3:30 mins, check the water doesn’t boil over etc. Typically, the eggs cook between 3:30 and

The cooked eggs usually pop out without a problem. Just turn the cups onto the toast and push the bottom.

I bought the cups off EBay. Two colours in our case as I prefer my eggs slightly more cooked.

When I tried it the door was flung back so violently the hinges were damaged as well though I had previously been successful on other occasions, so successfully I thought I would try doing two. The appliance concerned was in a mess room and mounted on a shelf roughly at at shoulder level. On the occasion of the incident in the seconds before as I was going to press the stop button (Its timer was mechanical and not that accurate) a colleague entered the room and stood between me and the M/Wave , he wasn’t terribly impressed when the oven door flew past following a loud bang and then covered him and the room in fragments of hot egg, fortunately he had not quite got to the stage of removing his visored hard hat so no injuries took place though possibly his underwear was affected while he recited various incantations some of which like the one questioning my parentage were decipherable. Everybody else calling him egghead for the next few days only increased his indignation.

GH

This water free method comes out same as poached but I'm not responsible for kitchen rebuilding costs or facial surgery. Take care.

Crack egg into a small 3" plastic bowl Cover very loosely(!) with a plastic lid Set level at 1000W and nuke for 45 seconds

At 43 seconds you may hear a small detonation. Wait a minute and enjoy.

If not, wait a minute, deploy protection and cautiously defuse the bomb at distance with a fork.

Minimal washing up, unless a mushroom cloud of white has escaped from containment, then you might need an angle grinder.

Mine definitely did and I still do even though the cap is a plastic material . Some people I know can poach an egg by cracking the shell and dropping the contents whole directly into boiling water but I have never achieved the knack of keeping it whole.

GH

You dont' directly adjust the power on a microwave. You merely decrease th e%age of the total time it spends at 100%.

Usually, although the newfangled inverter models do modulate down the power.

Relevant to this topic, the baseline time for the 50% can vary. eg my microwave does it in 15 second increments (ie 50%='450W' is 15 seconds at

Theo