Reheating poached eggs and storing them in warm water

Hi everyone,

I want to make a dish with poached egg for about 600 people. Our nearby school is having its yearly party, that's why it is so much. There will be a food court, so this is a thing going over time, not all people dropping in at once.

I was thinking of poaching the eggs one day ahead at 75 °C / 167°F for about 13 Minutes, then shock in ice water and store in a cool place. When the buffet opens, I would place a Sous Vide water bath near our place and just pop in around 20-50 eggs at once. Every time one egg is getting served, another egg has to go in the water bath. I am a bit concerned about the hygiene though: There is the possibility, that some eggs might stay in the water bath for an hour or longer. Also, what would be a good temperature to keep the eggs warm without overcooking them as time runs?

Thanks a lot for your input!

Find more posts tagged with

Recipes Q's

Comments

meyer8863

Eggs are essentials sterile while still in the shell, and really don't need to be refirdgerated (though most Americans do). I wouldn't worry about an egg sitting in the water beyond an hour. Dropping the temperature 2-3 degrees below the cooking temp should do the trick.

The one thing you do that may take a little extra work, is adding an egg as one is taken out. It would be a bummer to accidentally grab an egg you just put in, and before it is reheared. I would suggest creating some kind of divider in the water bath, so you can essentially have two batches. The eggs that are ready to serve, and the eggs that are retherming. There are plenty of options for that.

Eric_So_267001

I've had good success with cooking them ahead of time and storing, Once I need them reheated, I've dropped them and held them in a 50C bath, but haven't held for more than an hour.

wolfiegirl

If you haven't already, I would strongly suggest that you do a test cook of a few eggs at that time and temperature so you will have a clear picture of the doneness of the eggs. Another thing to take note of is the ease/difficulty in peeling the cooked eggs. As for tracking eggs being reheated, I would place a dozen or so eggs in a freezer bag, placing three or four bags in to reheat at a time. As you use up one bag you could refill the bag, place into the water bath and work from the next bag that has already been reheating. Number the bags for ease of reference. Good luck! I don't envy the task of peeling all those chicken embryos! On the other hand, you will be an expert by the end of the function!!

malte.evers

Thanks for all of your feedback!

Their is no need to peel them, you can just crack them open on top of the dish. Anything else would be complete madness.

Great advice with the bag, I will simply put a sticker or force them to write the date on the bag before filling it. This way, I can even ensure that it is all hot and nice. I am going to test this anyway, I will check this as well with an egg that lies in the water bath for longer than an hour and check the temperature or if anything changed much.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

The big problem is going to be cooking that many eggs sous vide with a temperature delta. You can't add 500, 100, or even 50 fridge-temperature eggs to a SV bath without its temperature dropping significantly, and that's going to alter the timing of everything. Pulling them all from the bath in a timely fashion is also a problem. Rather than cooking at such a high temperature, I'd do larger batches at lower temperatures but longer cook times... like, say, 63C for an hour. Then you don't have to worry about timing while cooking.

To hold eggs for service, go for 134.5F as a bath temperature. This is high enough to be in the safe zone as far as pasteurization is concerned, but low enough that the egg won't cook.

I don't know about your "use an egg, then add an egg" strategy. First of all, how are you going to tell the newly added, still-cold-inside eggs from the ones that have been in there for a few minutes? But even if you can somehow tell which eggs were added when, it's going to take 30 minutes for the eggs to come up to serving temperature. After 15 minutes in the bath (from fridge temperature starting point) the internal temperature of the egg will only be slightly warmer than body temperature.

malte.evers

Thanks for the information! Yeah, I know that I can't add all eggs at once. That's no problem, we got a full day to prepare everything, so I am just going to cook eggs all day long.

So far, when the day has arrived, I think I'm going to place just a couple of ziplocked eggs in the water. My SV machine can heat up to 50 litre of water, so I can use a big basin. Furthermore, I have got the possibility to use a bain marie on my station, so if things are actually getting tricky, I could "preheat" more eggs with less temperature control. We'll see. If this is getting to complicated, I will just turn on the steamer in the school canteen and serve hard boiled eggs. Still, you've got to dream and make the best out of it