May 9, 2009

Poached or boiled, not scrambled or in an omelette

I thought I couldn't handle eggs well, but it turns out that it may have been due to making scrambled eggs or omelettes. I just learned that when you break the yolk and subject it to air and high temperature, this oxidizes the cholesterol in the yolk. Your body goes after oxidized substances (with antioxidants), and you've already got enough -- you don't need to take in even more from your diet. I'll never forget making a three-egg omelette and feeling like my stomach was going to burst.

Cooking eggs by poaching, boiling, or frying sunny-side up keeps this from happening, though. You figure that boiling is probably the way we've been cooking eggs for the longest time -- boiling is an incredibly simple technology, unlike what it takes to whip and fry up eggs. The hard part has always been finding, stealing, and transporting an animal's eggs back to your site. I bought an egg-poacher because I'm lazy and don't want to deal with the extra work of poaching them in a large pot or wok (which I don't own).

I tried it out last night, and it's a miracle. I had four poached eggs for dinner, which based on the three-egg omelette experience, I thought would do me in. Instead -- zippo. It's even more amazing since I ate a ton of other stuff alongside them: eight slices of dry salami, four tomato slices with a pat of cream cheese on each, a handful of almonds dressed in olive oil, a pickle, six strawberries with a little chunk of Roquefort cheese for each, a glass of water, and a cup of almond milk cut with a tablespoon or so of heavy whipping cream.

I felt full for the rest of the night, and dreaded the thought of eating anything else, no matter how tempting. And I kept checking how my gut looked in the mirror -- no expansion whatsoever. All thanks to poaching the eggs instead of going with my typical omelette. I'll be having four eggs a day from now on -- they're an incredibly cheap source of fat, protein, and vitamins and minerals.

9 comments:

  1. I don't know anything about science, so these are probably stupid questions....

    Is there something particular about the yolk and cholesterol that makes it oxidize? Doesn't the egg white also oxidize as well? Is the problem that cholesterol oxidizes much more than the egg white?

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  2. I learned the same thing about egg yolks. My solution? Breakfast is raw eggs. Getting used to the texture is the worst part.

    -Steve Johnson

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  3. Baking is another way to cook eggs while keeping the yolks intact. Baked eggs with a dash of cream are delicious.

    Peter

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  4. When you beat the eggs for scambled eggs, do you beat the living hell out of them until they are a yellowish goo?

    This may or may not work for you, but try lightly beating the eggs a few times. You should still see some of the egg white intact. I usually puncture the membrane of the yolks and beat the eggs maybe five or six times.

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  5. Perhaps this is a good time to see if anyone has a good bodybuilding shake recipe with eggs -- but without protein supplements or any other unnatural additives.

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  6. Wow, this is useful to know. Thanks.

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  7. Baking is another way to cook eggsAKA 'shirring'; googling for shirred eggs turns up some pretty good recipes.

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  8. Eggs are okay, but I'd stay away from the protein shakes. They differ in quality of the shake.

    I went to a gym for years and took my shake daily. No problem there. After I moved and went to some other gym where I got some other shake, I suddenly got a lot of acne and similar allergic reactions. Not everybody responds well to high protein food.

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  9. The new shake probably had a lot of dairy -- it gives you acne.

    I'll put up with it for a week or so while I really indulge in dairy, but I have to cut back afterward.

    Make sure anything with lots of protein has a good dose of vitamin A, preferable from an animal source like liver. High-protein diets deplete your body of vitamin A.

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