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Swiss Eggs Benedict is an elevated version of one of my favorite Saturday morning breakfast recipes: Swiss Spinach Eggs – which, in turn, is the result of a dinner improvisation. It swaps out Swiss cheese sauce for the traditional Hollandaise, cottage bacon for the Canadian bacon, and rustic bread for the English muffin. The result is something a bit earthier, but just as delicious.
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Servings: Making as many as four of these at once is easy.[1]
Poaching eggs takes a tiny bit of practice – seriously, by the time you’ve made you’re second poached-egg breakfast, you’ll be an expert. Nonetheless, if you’re dead set against tackling the task, you could make this dish with fried eggs if you fried them over very low heat, covered, and kept them fairly soft OR if you deep fried them in clarified butter!
Ingredients for Four Eggs
4 pieces of cottage bacon
Swiss cheese sauce (recipe below)
4 pieces of rustic, artisan bread
4 eggs
Vinegar
Salt
Stone-ground mustard
Start with the bacon.
Cottage bacon has a texture similar to Canadian bacon or thinly-sliced ham steaks, but a smokier flavor. It’s not as fatty as regular bacon. It needs to be cooked slowly, over a low flame. No need to add oil to the pan. Because you’re in no hurry, use the lowest flame, turning the bacon occasionally. Once you see that it’s starting to brown, off flame. Continue to turn the bacon occasionally until the residual heat in the pan dissipates.
Meanwhile, make the cheese sauce.
Makes about 2 cups, which is enough for 6-8 eggs. Leftover sauce is fantastic on pasta.
You’re going to make a béchamel sauce, to which you’re going to add cheese and mustard.
Ingredients
2 Tbs butter[2]
2 Tbs flour
1¼ cups milk, microwaved for 2 minutes on full power
½ cup shredded Swiss cheese
½ tsp salt, or to taste
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 tsp stone-ground mustard
Directions
Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan, over very low heat. Be careful not to let it brown. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the paste cooks and bubbles – again, don’t let it brown. After about 2 minutes, or as soon as you see that the mixture is starting to deepen in color, whichever comes first, add the hot milk, and whisk as the sauce thickens. Bring it to a boil.
Adjust heat to lowest setting. Whisk in cheese until smooth and fully incorporated. Add salt, pepper, and mustard, and cook, whisking, for 2 to 3 minutes more. Off heat.
As the sauce cools, a skin will likely form on top. You can cover it with wax paper or lightly ladle a few Tbs of milk over the top and swtish it around gently, to coat. This will prevent a skin from forming. However, if a skin does form, it’s easy to whisk it back into the sauce as you reheat it.
Pop the bread into the toaster.
Set it to be just a bit underdone. I used Lithuanian Rye Bread for this post’s photographs. It’s bold, flavorful, and is to bacon and Swiss as the General Lee is to Bo and Duke. However, you might like a less assertive bread … perhaps an artisan sourdough. Herb, Nut, and Onion bread would be a good choice, as would Olive bread.
Poach the eggs.
I’m not going to reinvent the wheel for you. Here are some excellent poaching instructions:
- Video: Poached Eggs – How to Perfectly Poach an Egg (basic)
- Video: COOKING TIPS: How to Poach an Egg (super-fancy)
- Video: COOKING TIPS: How to Poach an Egg (in the normal way)
- Article: Perfect Poached Eggs
Here are my notes:
- For 6 cups of water, I add ¼-cup vinegar
- Don’t bother creating a whirlpool.[3]
- Don’t be too gentle when submerging the egg. Get it to the water’s edge, and then use a deliberate but non-violent flick of the wrist – not fast, not slow … just without hesitation – to turn the egg-carrying vessel upside down.
Bringing it all together:
Just before the eggs go into the water, rewarm the bacon and the sauce over lowest flame, flipping the bacon and whisking the sauce on occasion. Pop the toast back into the toaster on the lowest setting. Then put in the eggs.
When the toast comes up, scrape it lightly with the same mustard you used in the sauce. Just before the eggs are ready, top the toast with bacon. Remove the finished eggs to half-sheets of paper towels, folded in half, one towel per egg. For each egg: place a slotted spoon upside down on top of the egg. Invert the towel-egg-spoon and remove the towel, leaving the egg in the spoon. Slide the egg off the spoon onto bacon. Or use your fingers if you’re impervious to heat. Top with sauce and serve.
Pulling it off for a breakfast or brunch that occurs in the unvarnished, bona fide morning, without resorting to amphetamines:
There are a number of tricks you can use to poach more eggs than will fit in your pan. You can use these same tricks to poach any number of eggs in advance. The eggs and the sauce can be prepped ahead – the eggs day before, the sauce more than that, even. The bacon, too, you can fry, refrigerate, and then reheat over very low heat, briefly, or nuke on very low power. You could find yourself with nothing to do but some toasting and reheating.
Swiss Eggs Benedict
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Notes:
This recipe was featured on Mr. Breakfast!
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