Holy Guacamole - Sous Vide Eggs Benny on Toast

I'm sure I've written about this before but I can't help but make a note of how easy this is to do for serving brunch or breakfast or heck, as a super posh dinner, for that matter. Especially if feeding a crowd. 

Sous vide poached eggs are so dope! So easy and impressive all at the same time that I don't know why having this device isn't more popular. It's the perfect foodie kitchen tool. Seriously, a favorite; even for a lazy girl. And yet, even in a lazy girl’s hands sous vide cooking can be ever so chic... 

For one thing, if most people knew just how quick and uber productive it is to put a bunch of eggs in a water bath, right in their little shells, along with a jar of all your beautiful hollandaise ingredients and just walk away until you are ready to serve... they'd probably think you were on crack. But once you have the correct temperature for your ingredients, it really is a walk away sorta deal. 

And the really cool bit is that even if every single guest needs to be served at a different time, you've still got it covered. For like hours... Perfect temp. Every time. Talk about completely stabilizing, what to me, is the hardest part of cooking really. 

Tsu can time food much better than I can but with Tsu Vide (lol ah autocorrect), I get a fair shake. Sous vide truly streamlines and perfects the whole timeline of food delivery; where I struggle when meal prepping on my own. Perfectly cooked ingredients, kept to temp and served according to that perfect temp at the perfect time, is a real art form. And probably where I fall down the most. I mean, it's hard people. 

Not anymore. 

Sous vide allows you to extend your meal service over hours, and at times, even overnight. What we have done, quite unintentionally, is test this extended dinner service planning with smoked ribs or other cooked ahead meals we want to reheat without recooking. 

Wanting to eat at random times is par for the course in a household that on occasion, has 3 grown man-boys who eat and sleep randomly and can be hungry pretty much 24/7. Same with my family who can descend like a large pack and eat like one, too. 

When the family is here, sous vide baths are used to keep dinner warm in case it’s a beach day or even just for overnight munch-outs or now, all day mimosa brunches. Sounds fun, huh? Trust me, it‘s magic. 

It’s the secret weapon of world renown chefs all over the world. And it’s our secret weapon, too. 

Inspiration for this dish is really guac on toast with sous vide poached eggs, hollandaise and lobster because Covid quarantine ain’t no joke, live large. The idea for me, is to basically have everything sous vide for this meal except for the guacamole and/or toast. Lobster is totally rockstar but use the most decadent topper you can think of or afford. Because we eating a lot at home, people...

Breakfast Prep: 

This is a general guideline for how I prep my breakfast or brunch basics.

1. Poach eggs. Place whole fresh eggs in a sous vide bath set to 145 F f or 45-60 minutes, turning down the sous vide to 130 F if wanting to keep warm indefinitely or over an extended meal service. Because ‘doneness’ means something different to everyone, it’s a good idea to test one at the 45 minute mark. Personally, I like a medium set white which might mean something different to you but for me that is closer to the 1 hr mark than not... I have also put fresh eggs in a stretchy, silicone strainer meant for steaming veggies, air removed, which works perfectly. This keeps eggs within reach and from rolling around in the water bath but it won’t hurt them one bit if that’s what you choose to do.
2. Make hollandaise (see my recipe here) and yes, guess what, you can just add all ingredients to your jar and use your immersion blender later when ready to serve, to emulsify it. You can also make it proper in your bullet then transfer that to your glass jar. I’ve done it successfully both ways just to test prepping all at once and it was awesome. 
3. Make guacamole or serve with sliced or mashed avocados. If you don’t care for or have avocado, no biggie. Make what you love or use what ya got. Because guess what goes with eggs and hollandaise? Everything.
4. Make toast, croissants, English muffins, cloud bread, Hawaiian bread, sourdough, baguette...  whatever you like to eat with your eggs. Waffles, pancakes, aebelskiver. Yup and yup.

The beauty of this breakfast is that you can control the temp for a perfectly poached egg, perfectly warmed hollandaise and all you have to do is prep toast, muffins or buns for your breakfast service magic. 

My new easy breezy sous vide hollandaise sauce:

• 3 egg yolks
• 1 stick salted sweet cream butter
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice (I had Hawaiian lemon aka Rangpur)
• Dash salt, pepper to taste
• 3 tbsp half n half (optional)

1. Put all ingredients in a mason jar with tight fitting lid. Don’t even have to stir, nothing.
2. Drop it like it’s hot into your water bath, along with your eggies. That’s 145 F, good buddy.
3. When ready to serve, blend with an immersion blender. Drop back into the sous vide bath yo keep warm as you serve. Bad ass way to keep hollandaise warm. 

**By the way, the ‘optional’ half n half, to me, is critical. It isn’t in traditional hollandaise but I won’t do it differently now because it keeps the sauce supple and perfectly thick but pourable. Do it just once, please, because you will see just what I mean.

My Wednesday Night Dinner version: 

-Bed of organic Frisse, arugula or radicchio mix
-Hollandaise or lemon vinaigrette or homemade caesar dressing and wait for it...
-Poached sous vide lobster

Some cool keto-friendly variations for poached egg goodness:

• On a chorizo slider
• Hangover burger or locomoco style on a beef patty (without the bun, of course)
• Served with cloud bread made savory like italian garlic bread
• Over a slice of fried char siu with bacon marmalade
• In a shallow bowl of roasted tomato sauce,  shakshuka-style
• On a bed of poached shrimp and cucumber salad
• Fried rice with fried eggs is the norm in our house but next time, I may just suggest poached eggs just to have on hand for the midnight snack attacks.

Endless possibilities with sous vide poached eggs, she gushes on and on enthusiastically. ;)

Living Sous Vide Loca - Perfectly Poached Eggs

Food. Obsession. Pretty much covers how I feel about sous vide cooking, which I've been doing for a couple of months now. Got an early Christmas present just before Thanksgiving and I haven't been the same since.

Sous vide has been around for quite a while and I've been longing for a sous vide device for years after seeing it done on the original Iron Chef. Sous vide is a French technique of cooking using vacuum sealed bags of ingredients in a temperature controlled water bath. Pure precision without all the fuss.

It controls the speed, texture and moisture of your ingredients. It's a rather low maintenance, slow cooking process that makes a crock pot look outdated and clumsy, although don't get me wrong, I love crock pot cooking.

This however, takes slow cooking to a whole other level... upscale, classy, perfection.

Now, we all know you do not need any fancy device to poach or scramble eggs. But if you want perfection, replicable perfection, every single time, while you do laundry, set the table, putz in the garden or finish watching your favorite marathon tv adventures, this is almost certainly a cooking technique you will appreciate.

I have an Anova digital sous vide device with a cool little app for android that connects my sous vide device to my phone via Wi-Fi. It also has a great user contributed recipe database where I can search (or upload) recipes and select them to set the sous vide temperature and timer for my device remotely. Geeky, I know.  I just love it; without any apology.  A perfect present for a gastro-geek like myself.

It is precise; so forgiving. It is divine. It is so low maintenance and beautiful, you will want to run it in your kitchen 24/7, just like a chef, so it's always ready when you are.

But, I don't do that, although it is almost a permanent fixture now in my kitchen.

Today, I had a craving for eggs. I get gorgeous free range eggs from the organic farm next door and what better way to do them justice? Plain and luscious and beautiful. I will likely serve mine with a tuna nicoise salad or maybe with a hollandaise.  The hollandaise I will make first because it cooks at a lower temperature than the eggs and the eggs will cook in 15 minutes giving me plenty of time to emulsify the sauce before serving with my eggs.

Sous Vide Hollandaise (149F/69C  45 minutes- 1hr):

• 1 tablespoon (15 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons/114 g) butter
• 3 egg yolks (large), well-beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt
• 1 pinch (1 ml) dry mustard

I put everything in a mason jar, sealed it with a cap and put it in the water bath with everything else.  Once it's done, I will use my immersion blender to emulsify it into a beautiful sauce.

Wish... I.... Would... Have...Tightened...The...Lid.... lol! Next time, I will put it in a baggie and then transfer it to a bowl to emulsify. So needless to say my recipe didn't quite work this time, but there's always next time.

Today I am doing both poached eggs and scrambled at 167 degrees F, for 15 minutes.  The eggs are poached right in their shells.  My poached eggs will come out of the water bath and into a cup of ice water until cool to touch. Crack the shells and the poachies will come right out in a perfect little ball. 

The scrambled eggs are done in a ziplock bag with the air removed. That's it, no real skill to it just be sure to remove the air out of the bag when you seal it.  Some massage the bag every so often but I find that unnecessary. I push it around the water bath with a big wooden spoon and that works just fine. I also add a little heavy cream and a little milk to the beaten eggs, but that is entirely optional. A little salt and pepper and then just drop the sealed bag in the water bath and step away. 

If after 15 minutes, the scrambled eggs are still a little moist for you liking, just keep cooking in the water bath until you are pleased with the texture. Remember, it is really difficult to overcook or dry out your food when using sous vide, which makes it perfect if you happen to lose track of time on the scrambled eggs. And worse case with the poached eggs, you will simply get hard boiled eggs. But do try to remove the poached eggs at or before the 15 minute mark until you get the hang of what you like in a poached egg texture.

I have been saving my egg shells for the tomato garden as this adds calcium back to the soil (along with banana peels) which helps prevent blossom end rot in the rainy season. You may not care about that, but hey, if you check out RoofGrown, my gardening blog, then you'll know that it all matters to me! 

I am serving my poached eggs today over some gorgeous locally grown (as in 5 minutes from my house) beefsteak tomatoes that I will slice thickly in lieu of english muffins. Which I have on hand, but these tomatoes are the bomb, so I am craving those instead. Topped of course, with the hollandaise, it would have been even better. 

My breakfast buddy wanted a more traditional poached experience so I made his with a little homemade garlic hummus, fresh Florida avocado, arugula from the garden and one of our favorite condiments, garlic aioli. Since I messed up the hollandaise... lol! but oh jeez this version was so delicious, too! I will post a recipe for that next because it is truly delicious and Tsunami's mother absolutely adores it so next time we make it, we will make extra for her.

Alas, even without the hollandaise the eggs were so good that I ate them without anything but salt and pepper. The poached eggs, once out of their shells, were the perfect soft boiled poached egg. A couple of minutes shy of 15 and it would have been runny enough while still having a set white. I'll continue to update this post once I find my sous vide zen as I could write an entire post just on temps and timing.

The scrambled eggs, well, they had a fluffy custard-like texture that was so delicious. You can never get this out of a pan and with a little of your favorite cheese or fillings, it would make your regular omelette cry out in a jealous rage. Serious competition for pan scrambled eggs or an omelette. Just can't beat it. And if you happen to be entertaining for breakfast or just a big hungry family, this is the perfect way to make a large batch of scrambled eggs without letting them get too dry. Just in case you have sleepy monsters that wake at all hours of the morning or, as is sometimes the case in my house... well into the afternoon.

Tuna Nicoise, you'll just have to wait for another day... I guess all I can say about that is that if you want to serve your poachies a certain way, you should get everything else prepared ahead so they go right onto your dish once they're ready. Otherwise, they are just too good not to pop into your mouth and gobble up as they are. And I actually had my beautiful tomatoes all on the ready so I ended up serving those with the scrambled eggs instead. Divine.

***Update - Made the Hollandaise sauce today (Feb 3, 2016) and not only did the Hollandaise sauce turn out perfectly, but the poached eggs I did at the same time and they too were perfect. That means you don't need a higher temp/short cooking time when you do them together. That gives you perfect time to remove the eggs when the timer goes off, put them in an ice water bath while you emulsify the sauce so they can be served together warm. It was such a gorgeous sauce without any fuss! Talk about a great go to for company! Really doesn't get more luxurious or delicious with so little effort. I also added a dash of garlic powder, which turned out lovely but you could also do a dash of garlic oil. :)