Poaching an Egg in Red Wine, the French Way

[light piano music begins]

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

That's a good start.

[Fredrick] Takes a professional!

Welcome to Buford and Sons!

With your Host Bill Buford,

our cinematographer, whom you'll never see, George Buford,

and our director

Frederick Buford.

[crowd cheers]

Today we come to your from our new home, in Brooklyn,

in our first preparation in our new home is -

Oeufs en Meurette.

Eggs, eggs poached in red wine.

The beauty of the dish

is obviously

the egg poached in the red wine, but it is really the sauce

that goes with it.

The sauce which is called a Mourette

which consists of a whole bottle of wine, reduced down

with bacon and onions and some reduced chicken stock.

And you thicken it until

you can pour it over your poached egg.

Now the trick about egg poached in red wine,

is that it's actually pretty ugly.

I admit,

to look at is not immediately appetizing,

it looks a little bit like octopus

or road kill.

But in fact, it's delicious.

[dramatic trumpet music plays]

The sauce is four components.

The wine, obviously,

which we reduced down.

And, the bacon element which is we crisp up.

The mushrooms which we cook in the bacon fat,

and chicken stock which we very slowly

reduce down while everything is going on.

The basis of our sauce is the onion, cut it in half,

and I usually do it the TIKTOK style,

where I go down and down.

[Frederick] TIKTOK style?

[Bill] Haha, Tik Tak Toe. My brain's been infected.

Shallot.

[Frederick] Cutting your onion's, Instagram style.

[Bill laughs]

[George] You guys are weird.

[Bill] We will now saute these in butter.

Soften it, take a little bit of the bite out of it.

So this is actually, this is, this wine cost $24,

and it's actually expensive for a Beaujolais,

and the only reason I am using it is because

I already used up all the cheaper ones

practicing this dish

before you got here!

[Bill blows the top of the bottle making a whistle sound]

[Frederick] Stop, no, come on this is over.

But you don't have to spend much money.

A Beaujolais,

you can get a very good Beaujolais,

for $15-$16, and for a sauce you want something

that you can drink and you reduce it down

and it just makes for utter deliciousness.

[wine bottle cork pops]

[Frederick] It's a lot of wine!

[Bill] It's a lot of wine. Do the whole bottle of wine.

Cause I have some Marc,

which is the Eau-de-Vie of Burgundy,

absolutely not necessary if you don't have it.

But if you do have it it is actually traditional.

And it is a high spirit, and we want to bring

the whole thing to a boil,

set it a light to burn off the alcohol.

[Frederick] What are you doing? Ya that was,

[fire alarm starts ringing]

[Bill continues to laugh]

[George] This is his first time cooking.

[Frederick] Ya that was, this is a beginner's guide.

He's now wrapping it with his, uh,

spit, spit string.

So I added my bundle of herbs and I will now simmer

the wine for, oof, 45 minutes, maybe an hour.

Until it's, just about, just about disappeared.

Which, I've already done.

And we're gonna add some more red wine to that.

This is a whole different bottle, reduced to this,

and it'll be the foundation of our sauce,

and be completely delicious.

While the wine is reducing,

I add my,

[pot sizzles loudly]

I'll often do,

quart and a half,

sometimes two quarts, and reduce it down again.

Combined with the red wine,

it just makes for a very

rich sauce with the bacon and egg,

and so we're gonna cook our, uh, eggs in.

The last elements in our sauce preparation,

is our bacon ingredient.

Actually I have some house cured bacon from our local

butcher and some pancetta, mixing the two together.

And, it's about 4 ounces.

We will cook it until it's crispy,

and most of the fat is rendered.

This will also go in our sauce.

[Frederick] Buddy! He doesn't look at you.

Buddy look at the camera!

Oh wow that's like a professional.

[Bill] So I agree with the principle,

not to cut on the cutting board.

So we'll cut it like a banana, basically,

the way my mother first cut a banana for me I remember.

So now our bacon is rendered,

and we remove it.

But we keep the fat in there.

I'm adding the mushrooms to the pork fat, the bacon fat.

This will only take 2-3 minutes,

then we can poach our eggs.

Mushrooms in bacon fat, that's a good smell!

[George] You look really ugly.

[Frederick] Okay we're done, thank you George!

Before poaching our egg in red wine,

I think it's probably worth reviewing

how to poach an egg in water,

which is easier to follow the cooking procedure.

These are a special egg,

and I think they're called - Araucanas.

In which the proportion

of yolk

to white is higher.

The yolk is the fat,

it's the nutrition of the future animal,

it's like all the good food of the egg.

The white is also important, it's the protein,

but the yolk is our flavor.

Basic lesson in poaching an egg:

add a little bit of white vinegar. It seems to help

the proteins conform, coagulate.

Add salt and bring it to a boil.

I gave the water a swirl. I like using a wooden spoon

like this and I put the egg white in there,

and then ideally it forms in the swirl,

and then when that happens I turn it down low.

At this point, I usually put my straining spoon

underneath it so the egg doesn't rest on the bottom,

and cook too quickly.

Waiting for the moment when the white is cooked.

[Frederick] How do you know when the white is cooked?

[Bill] At the moment it's, clear and when it goes

to opaque it's cooked.

Sometimes, I'll raise the egg out the water

and spoon

hot water on top of it.

I get very excited by eggs.

Now it's still, cooking.

Basic poached egg cooked in water.

Next egg is going to be poached in wine.

The difference between wine and water?

Well, the wine is obviously more opaque and a little

harder to judge the cooking.

But the same cooking methods will apply.

[Frederick] Let's go make it in wine!

[Bill] Let's go do it in wine!

Bring the wine to a boil.

I'm also going to give it a shot

of red wine vinegar and I'll add a little bit of salt.

Gonna get a boil, give it a good stir,

and I'll leave

it for a minute or so before I slip in the straining

spoon underneath.

And so I'm splashing it.

So I'll let this carry-on cooking.

As you can see it's quite a different kind of egg

from the normal poached egg.

Trim up the blobby bits.

[Frederick] It's like the aftermath

of heart surgery.

[Bill laughs]

[Frederick] A failed heart surgery.

Now the wine that I poached the egg in, I'm gonna strain

it and add some of it to our reduction sauce.

And then heat that up, reduce it a tiny bit more.

Drain our wine sauce from the onions and the shallots

and the garlic herbs.

This is our 2 quarts of chicken stock reduced down to that.

When it bubbles like this, when it starts to boil

and bubble quite thickly, the chicken stock,

that's when it starts to become something the French call

a Demi-Glace.

It's starting to get really really intense,

and it introduces a beautiful element to the sauce.

Then I'm going to add some butter

The butter is really to thicken it.

The conventional way does finish it with butter

or with flour.

As soon as the butter is emulsified,

then we're going to add our

mushrooms

and bacon element.

[Frederick] Bacon!

[Bill] It's almost a stew of mushrooms,

and there's a lot of wine that went into this.

And that's our meurette.

We're putting our two eggs on two pieces of toast

that I grilled in the oven.

This is our sauce meurette.

The meatiness and the fat of the bacon and the earthiness

in the mushrooms and the acidity of the wine,

I just thought,

I'm saving the rest of this

for breakfast

and putting it in a mug.

[Frederick] It looks like a crime scene!

[Bill laughs]

If it's a crime, it's a crime of not being able to eat it.

[Frederick] Stop, oh stop.

♪Jessica's Wine Pairing♪

[George] Why do you say it like that?

[Jessica] Because it's funny!

[George] Sounds stupid.

Uh, we can't do Jessica's Wine Pairing live tonight

because Jessica is in bed recovering from her

second COVID vaccine shot.

Whoop, whoop, whoop!

But! She gave me the wine pairing to share with you.

Why not!

Yeah!

So, what's the best wine to drink with Oeuf en meurette?

That's the easiest pairing ever!

What wine did you cook it with?

Well, Beaujolais, obviously!

Great, so we'll get them...

Uh there's none left.

I just got a really weird bottle of Beaujolais.

Great!

Look, and we're back!

Look at this,

um,

Shi-broooooolz

Perfect for food.

[rewind effect]

[Jessica] You're never supposed to say Beaujolais,

you're supposed to say I finished it!

[George] Mom, mom!

You're in bed,

remember?

[Frederick] Wait how is it with the food?

I'm not gonna eat that.

It smells a lot.

Oh it is good!

Is it good with the weird wine?

It's good with the weird wine!

Oh, that's a strong smell!