Egg Cooker: Cuisinart Egg Central
No one needs an egg cooker. I know this, so I am not sure why I felt the need to buy one at Bed Bath Bring It Back (BBB) yesterday. I’m not even sure why I set foot in that store. It’s always a mistake.
Egg Central (the egg cooker) was a challenge to set up. It required two trips to BBB (doesn’t everything?) because the pin on the bottom of my beaker (that you use to add water to the cooker) would not pierce through my eggs. The instructions tell you to pierce the eggs before adding them to the cooker. I assume this is to keep them from exploding. When I arrived back at BBB Bob looked at the Egg Central and determined that a small protective piece of plastic was keeping the beaker pin from piercing the eggs and pulled it off with a pair of tweezers. My plan was to return the Egg Central, but Bob was very helpful and nice and I had left the receipt at home (I did not want a store credit). He also said he would inform his employees to tell customers who purchase the Egg Central, in the future, how to remove the plastic tab from the beaker pin. He won’t, and they won’t, but it was an attempt at a well-intended meaningless gesture.
Before I headed back home I needed to stop and buy more eggs since I broken three eggs during the first egg piercing process. Home again, I once again set up the Egg Central, added the water, pieced the eggs, placed the eggs on the cooking rack, plugged the appliance in, and waited. Soon it started to bubble madly, bounce on my counter – threatening to throw itself on the floor, leaving boiling water in its wake. While grabbing a towel to hold it down, I knocked a glass pie plate off the counter onto my tile floor. A piece of the glass jumped up and stabbed my foot, causing a minor wound to gush blood onto the floor. As soon as the Egg Central beeped and I could let go of it and turn it off, I put a bandage on my foot and cleaned up the glass, blood, and spilled water while the eggs cooled. Carefully lifting the lid of the Egg Central, I found my eggs covered in some sort of spun egg thread and cracked, and the inside of the appliance had egg bits all over it. The hard boiled eggs tasted okay but were a little over cooked.
As I cleaned the egg off the cooker, I was left to ponder what went wrong (besides the obvious—buying the product in the first place!). Did I put too much water in the bottom of the unit? Or was it because I dismissed the idea of using the suggested distilled water and used ordinary tap water? I found and watched a You-Tube video hoping to be enlightened, but clearly this lady and I were not having the same experience.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/lZbi-tJRb78[/youtube]
I can’t wait to see what happens when Cole poaches an egg this morno. I’ll video tape it. I could not video tape my efforts—you understand why, right?
I bet most of you would walk right by the egg cookers at BBB without a second thought, or if you have a second thought, it would be something like, “Who on earth would buy one of those?” or “All that would do is take up counter space.” Or if you were interested, you would think, “That looks handy, but I don’t need one more gadget.” Not me. I’m a go getter. I looked at that egg cooker and thought, “WOW! I’ve wanted one of those my entire life, and it is on sale, and I have a coupon!” Cha ching! However, I have no interest in the Frothy as-seen-on-TV water carbonator. I think that’s growth on my part, don’t you?
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I never would have bought this because I am not a poached egg lover but good golly—- it seems like a lot of messing around for unsatisfactory results. Hope your wounds heal—- I was on a streak of breaking something everyday in the kitchen and Chris would ask me what I was going to break today. 🙂
My wound. Awful, terrible. I’ll limp for weeks. Not really, but if that piece of glass had bounced a little higher I’m certain it would have put my eye out!!!
Isn’t it funny how breakage comes in cycles. That happens at my house too. Odd.
My favorite part of your story is the following: “it was an attempt at a well-intended meaningless gesture.”. Too funny.
I remember your exploded eggs from some years back. And now this. So I’m going to help you by sharing my Mom’s secret for perfect hard boiled eggs.
Place desired number of eggs in bottom of empty pan. Ideally, the number of eggs laying on their sides should fill the pan so when the boiling takes place they don’t have a lot of room to bounce around.
Fill the pan with cold water until the eggs are nearly covered. Sprinkle liberally with salt (think Dead Sea – it keeps the eggs a little buoyant.) Place the pan on the stove and turn the burner to high and wait for the water to boil. Now is a good time to load the dishwasher, clean out the fridge, wipe down the counters, or repackage your BBB Egg Cooker for return. In other words, hang out in the kitchen until the water in the pan reaches a “rolling” boil. Not just a few boil bubbles, but a jolly pan full of rolling bubbles. NOW set a timer for 2 minutes. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat, put a lid on the pan and, if you have an electric stove, remove the pan from the hot burner. Reset the timer for 5 minutes (6 if you prefer a more well done egg). When the timer goes off, remove lid, bring pan to sink, and run cold water into the pan until all the hot water has been replaced with cold water. Let the eggs hang out in the cold bath for a few minutes. Now they are ready to eat, or refrigerate, or decorate for Easter. Enjoy!
Sounds like a jolly good way to hard boil eggs. Blessings to your sweet Mom. I only have one question….you couldn’t have shared after the first explosion? Give a girl a new way of doing something and save her from a lifetime of seen on TV gadgets. Oh well, better late than never—I will try this week! THANK YOU.
Things are just not simple, are they?
Sums it up nicely. Very nicely.
Yikes, that’s a lot of pain and aggravation for one little old egg cooker, isn’t it? And to hear that the results were less than desirable just adds salt to the wound (ooh, I didn’t say ‘wound,’ did I? And here you are, suffering with yet another foot issue. Sigh.)
Hope you mend soon!
Well, Cole was much more successful with his poached egg. I don’t care for poached, however. Thank you, my wound was just a small deep execrating painful gash that bled buckets. No really. But in the moment that is the drama I reacted to. Really, it was a minor cut that bled enough to make a mess and make me swear.
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