.::the ramblings of spyke::.

Okay. So here we go. I am going to do these “reviews” of sorts once in a while, because I live with a 93-year-old grandmother, and we have all kinds of weird shit here. Shit from the 60s, shit from the 70s, shit from even earlier. This caught my eye one day when in the closet, but I never got around to pulling it down, because it was always covered in other crap we never use, and I never needed it, because I have this little plastic microwave egg poacher. It works pretty well, but has the potential to be messy if done wrong, and it’s getting a little discolored from the butter that is used. I decided to drag this thing down because I wanted eggs. Then I decided to take pictures, and put it on here. Damn. I need a life. It’s definitely 5AM and I need to be up to meet the ladyfriend’s family. Did I mention it’s Thanksgiving today? Happy Thanksgiving! Okay. No more distractions.

At first sight, there isn’t much to say about this thing. It’s an egg cooker. They still make them, and can be found on Amazon, and probably in brick and mortar stores too. I haven’t looked.  I’m sure some of you are asking “EY! YO! MIKE! WHY ARE YOU USING THIS THING?! WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH A FRYING PAN?!” Well, honestly, I have never properly poached an egg, and I didn’t feel like using a pot and staring at my MacBook Pro to learn how. It looked easy to use, and I figured, “Hey, why not.” So, let’s see what’s inside.

Okay.  We keep stuff really well here. This thing has all the original paperwork, it even has a warranty card and original manual, both of which have highly entertaining illustrations of people enjoying an egg-filled utopia, and ads for other Oster products, such as blenders, curling irons, dog shears, massaging foot baths, vibrators back massagers, food processors…the list goes on. (I’ll have to try and scan them some time. Maybe when it’s NOT almost 6AM, and I get around to doing a part 2 of this for the Hard boiled egg portion of the thing.) It even has a piece of paper written by my grandmother, to remind her to spray the pan first. Good to see that her airheaded-ness isn’t just a sign of her older age, but went on during the 70s and 80s. Chances are that was the last time this thing was used. As you can see, it has all the parts. It consists of a base, which holds the water and the heating element. It’s ceramic, and really sturdy. It has a bit of a “well”, along with markers stamped into the ceramic.  The thing is capable of cooking eggs soft, poached, or hard. You can make the eggs as runny or as firm as you want, just add the desired level of water. Neat. It also comes with a glass (I want to think it’s made of Pyrex, or something similar) lid, a Teflon coated poaching tray (the brown one) and a hard boiled egg holder (silver). You can make 4 poached eggs, or 7 boiled eggs in it. In the instruction manual, it has a few recipes for Eggs Benedict, a brunch, Eggs Florentine, and something else, I forget. But that doesn’t matter. Now, onto setup.

It’s pretty easy.  You put a little bit of water in the base. The book says like, 3tsp or something to poach, but I just filled it with a little bit from a cup, as precise measurements are irrelevant, as there are little wells in the base that act as fill lines. After that, you grease the poaching tray with cooking spray, or butter. I used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! from a spray bottle. Yeah, they make it that way. It’s pretty sweet when you use it on corn-on-the-cob. Other than that, I just use it in cooking, to coat pans like this. Anyway, you take the lubed up tray, and drop in your eggs. After that, you put the lid on, and hit the button, and then you wait.

A quick word about the button. It only has one setting. On. Now, obviously, I know I’m not going to get space-age logic boards and buzzers, bells, and whistles. I have no idea how old this thing truly is, and buttons were pretty simple. There’s no timer, it just goes on, and I assume that once the thermostat hits a certain level, it just shuts off. This is evident in the manual, where it says that if you need to stop cooking, just pull the plug. Also, if you need to cook more eggs, you have to wait for it to cool, which can be accelerated by filling the base with ice water. It sucks that you have to let the thing cool, but that’s that. There are no timers here, no bells to let you know it’s done, just the click of the switch disengaging.

After about 5-10 minutes, I didn’t keep track, I just let it do it’s thing, the eggs were done.

Perfect! They were perfectly smooth, and cooked. There was a little bit of liquid on top of the eggs, but that was probably just the condensation from the steam dripping from the lid. As I stated above, it doesn’t have a timer or settings, the amount of cooking is set by the amount of water you put in it. Now the fun part. Getting the eggs out. I thought it was going to be easy, but maybe I didn’t spray the tray enough. They were in there. It says to use a rubber spatula to get them out in the book, so thats what I did. After one circle around each egg, they scooped right out. I ruptured a yolk in one of them, but that’s not a problem. The real question is, are they good?

They were amazing! They cooked JUST RIGHT. Not too drippy, not too firm. They were very tasty, and adding a little salt and pepper made them taste great! Normally I drown everything in hot sauce, but not poached eggs.  They disappeared fast. I wolfed down all four in 2 minutes.

Overall, it’s a nice little machine, but it DOES have it’s flaws They’re either minor, or just limitations of how old the thing is.  The lack of a buzzer or bell, or something to tell you when it’s done kinda sucks, but it’s not a deal breaker. You should be close by it anyway, and the little lighted button goes off, so it’s not like there’s ZERO indication of it being done. The cord is super short, which isn’t uncommon, even on new appliances, but in my kitchen it’s just short enough to be a pain in the ass. I didn’t have to use an extension cord, just had to move around a bit. Cleanup was a bit of a pain in the ass, it took a LOT of scrubbing to get the cooked egg off the poach tray. I am not sure if that’s due to inadequate spraying, or just shitty ancient Teflon.

As I said before, it’s a sweet little machine, and I can totally see myself running this thing into the ground. However, it’s an Oster, and Oster appliances are built like fucking tanks. We have an Osterizer blender that we use outside during the summer to blend Pina Coladas. Every Oster product we’ve owned is a beast, and I totally plan on giving this to my grandkids when they are old enough to cook.

As I mentioned before, you can find Egg cookers for around $25-$35 on Amazon. Funny enough, that’s about how much my mom/grandmother/whoever bought this thing paid for it back in the day. You know, that day. The day where a good housewife brought her husband the paper and spent her day cleaning the harvest gold colored counters and making a pot roast for her perfect Protestant family, all while worrying if the Soviets are going to drop the big one on us. Anyway, yeah. Here’s the original price tag. What a steal! And just what the fuck is Brendle’s anyway? Thanks Wikipedia. I can always depend on you. Now get your creepy founder’s rape face off of my articles. Thanks.