Photo: Popo le Chien · CC BY-SA 3.0
Œufs en Meurette (Eggs Poached in Red Wine Sauce)
A Burgundian egg dish: red wine reduced with shallot and garlic, the eggs poached straight in that wine, and the same wine then thickened with butter and flour into the sauce. Lardons, button mushrooms and pearl onions go with it, on toast rubbed with garlic.
Ingredients
- Wine
- red wine (Burgundy Pinot Noir or similar) · one worth drinking750 ml
- shallots · chopped2
- garlic · crushed2 cloves
- thyme2 sprigs
- bay leaf1
- sugar1 tsp
- Eggs and sauce
- eggs · very fresh8
- butter · softened30 g
- flour1 tbsp
- salt and pepper to taste
- Garniture
- lardons (thick-cut bacon)120 g
- button mushrooms · quartered150 g
- pearl onions · peeled12
- baguette8 slices
- garlic · for rubbing the toast1 clove
- parsley · chopped to taste
Steps
- ⏲ 15 min
Put the wine, shallots, crushed garlic, thyme, bay and sugar in a pan and boil uncovered until reduced by about a third. Strain into a wide pan. No salt yet.
- ⏲ 15 min
Meanwhile fry the lardons until they give up their fat and lift them out. Roll the pearl onions in that fat to colour them, add a splash of water, cover and cook until tender. Fry the mushrooms separately over high heat.
- ⏲ 3 min
Bring the strained wine to a bare shiver. Break each egg into a small cup, slide it gently into the wine and poach 3 minutes. The white takes on the colour of the wine. Lift them out and keep them warm.
- ⏲ 5 min
Rub the butter and flour together with your fingertips (beurre manié). Bring the wine back to the boil and whisk the paste in a little at a time until the sauce coats a spoon. Now season with salt and pepper. Add the lardons, onions and mushrooms and heat through.
Toast the baguette and rub it with garlic. Put the toast on the plates, set the eggs on top, pour over the sauce and scatter with parsley.
Variations
- Poached in water. Poach the eggs separately in boiling water with vinegar and pour only the sauce over. The whites stay white. The eggs in the photograph on this page are white.
- With white wine or crémant de Bourgogne. The same method with a different wine.
- Morvan style. Veal stock added to the sauce.
Tips
- Use a wine worth drinking, and reduce it first.
- Use very fresh eggs. The white spreads less.
- Keep the wine at a shiver, not a boil. A rolling boil tears the whites.
- Salt after the eggs come out.
- The wine is reduced, and the garniture cooked apart, for the reasons given in boeuf bourguignon. It is the same Burgundy wine sauce (alcohol in cooking).
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- The eggs are poached in the wine itself. French Wikipedia records two ways to cook them: poached in boiling vinegared water, the white keeps its colour; cooked directly in the meurette sauce, the egg takes on the sauce's colour and taste. This recipe is the second. Eggs Benedict throws its poaching water away, so it puts vinegar in that water and no salt. Here the poaching wine becomes the sauce, so keeping that rule means holding the seasoning back until the sauce is finished.
The basics behind this dish
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
- Salt: When You Add It Matters More Than How MuchThe same amount of salt either draws water out or seasons all the way through, depending on when it goes in. Osmosis, seasoning in layers, and why salt types are not interchangeable by volume.
- Heat Control: Preheating, Oil, and Reading the PanThe same ingredients become a different dish depending on pan temperature. When to add the oil, how to read heat by sound, and which dishes want low heat instead.
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