With the exception of some fancy restaurants, you hardly ever see poached eggs on a menu unless it is breakfast or brunch (maybe with a few exceptions). Personally, poached eggs are my favorite preparation of an egg. You are greeted with a delicate white outer portion which you know is filled with a warm, silky yolk, ready to gush all over your toast, or in this case, your salad.
Ideally this salad would be made primarily with frisee or arugula, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have available. The warm egg provides a nice dressing addition to the salad along with something very simple like a little extra virgin olive oil and red wine or champagne vinegar. You can go crazy with whatever accompaniments you like on your salad: tomato, carrot, celery, herbs, snap peas, etc. I used all of the ingredients listed, plus some red pepper and fresh corn. What would also great would be roasted peppers or roasted eggplant. Whatever floats your boat. I decided to cook a chicken sausage and add that below the egg.
Because this salad is really up to whatever you want on it and whatever vinegars you have on hand for a dressing, its a pretty free form recipe. The most essential part of this meal is the poached egg and knowing how to cook the perfect one. In the past I have made errors in my poaching leaving me with hard yolks and soft whites, or just a mess. One of my favorite blogs out there, Smitten Kitchen, has a great step by step instruction (with pictures) on how to do it perfectly. When I followed her steps, I was on my way to a perfect egg. You can find her instructions here
So for the typical ingredients section I’ll leave it open for your favorite greens.
Ingredients:
2 eggs – poached according to Smitten Kitchen
Lettuce of your choosing – enough for 2 people
Veggies – tomato, corn, carrot, whatever you want
Splash vinegar (for poaching)
White wine, balsamic, red wine vinegar for salad
extra virgin olive oil
pre-cooked chicken sausages (optional) – cut and reheated in pan
salt
pepper
Assemble salad and dress lightly, as you’ll have egg yolk to serve as more dressing.
Poach eggs according to Smitten Kitchen.
Top salad with cooked sausage and poached egg. Enjoy!!
I used the poached egg technique you recommended and — perfect poached eggs!!