Master The Art Of Poaching An Egg With This Simple Technique

When you slice into a poached egg and the yolk reveals itself, you just cannot resist eating something which looks so smashing and delicious. Isn’t it? Poaching an egg means putting it in water and allowing it to soften up. But it does not mean changing the structure of the egg. Just because it's got a soft egg white and runny yolk does not mean it changed shape. It means that it's cooked perfectly. You can pile a poached egg on toast, waffles, noodles, soups and even pizzas. You can season it with chilli or olive oil, salt, pepper, herbs and sauces or chutneys. 

But do you know the technique behind poaching an egg correctly? 

It takes a while to learn how to poach an egg, without getting something that looks too watery and undercooked. The watery stuff creates those white tentacles in the pan. They do not taste good. That is why we always wonder how do we get this stuff right. A lot of people think that it may be better to leave this task up to the pros. Haven’t you always wanted to eat eggs benedict at a restaurant because you just cannot manage to poach an egg at home? 

We’ll give you two simple tips —

- Get rid of the watery stuff which turns into tentacles in the water. The watery stuff is one part of the albumen, which is also called egg white. If you remove the watery stuff, you’ll still be left with the thicker part of the egg white that clings to the yolk. This part of the egg white will wrap itself around the yolk when it is put in hot water.  

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Photo: Adam Niescioruk

-People say that the water should only be ‘barely’ simmering. Is that what ‘poaching’ eggs means then? To barely simmer eggs? You may find that the more you dig into the topic of cooking techniques, the more complex it gets. I just wanted a simple explanation so I looked up different views. It turns out that the term ‘poaching’ refers to a technique in which the eggs must be submerged in a liquid and cooked using a very low temperature. This results in a runny egg yolk and egg white that is perfectly cooked. That’s it. The phrase ‘barely’ simmering has been used to differentiate it from other techniques such as simmering and steaming.  

Here, we share a method to poach eggs:  

METHOD  

  • Crack an egg open into a bowl.  
  • Using a sieve, separate the watery egg white in another bowl.  
  • Transfer the remaining part of the egg into a pan of hot water.  
  • Make sure that the water is not boiling hot. You should be able to see some bubbles in the water, but there shouldn’t be too much movement in the water. 

We hope that these tips are useful!