Poached eggs may seem simple enough to make, but there is a basic cooking technique that needs to be mastered to make sure you get a perfectly poached egg each time.
Michelin-trained chef Poppy O’Toole has shared her method for making poached eggs after one unlucky man named Max wrote to her and said he could never cook one correctly.
On TikTok, Max wrote: “Poppy this might be so boring but [how do you make] poached eggs? Mine always go wrong every single time. I’m bloody dreadful, need a tutorial.”
She made a video in reply and said: “Max, let me teach you how to make the perfect poached eggs. To start off, you’re going to need water, vinegar, and eggs but they need to be from the fridge.”
Cooking a poached egg is all about making sure it keeps its shape once it is added to a pot of water, and if it goes wrong your egg can come out misshapen, rubbery, or watery.
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Cold eggs are recommended for poached eggs as it helps the egg solidify better when cooking, while a warm egg will spread out in the water once it starts to set.
Poppy, who is also a BBC judge on Young Master Chef, has added that another key method to making a poached egg is to make sure your pot of water is not boiling hot.
She explained: “You want to get it not even shimmering. Just before shimmering, it needs to have a few bubbles.”
Temperature is the key is making sure you get a more compact and well-formed poached egg.
Before you even add an egg to the water, add a few drops of vinegar into the hot water. Poppy said: “That’s going to help the egg whites come together and form.”
This is a method also done in professional kitchens because the acid in white vinegar helps the proteins in the egg coagulate at a lower temperature, which allows the egg to set quickly once it is cooking.
Next, you are ready to cook. Crack your egg and place it in the water. Poppy said: “If you’re not that confident with your crack, crack your egg into a bowl separately.”
You can also use the bowl to easily slip the egg into the water if you are having trouble getting the egg to hold its shape.
Leave the eggs in the pot for three minutes to cook. They will be ready once you can use a slotted spoon to pick them up and prod them to see if they are cooked to your liking.
Place on a tea towel once fully cooked, and your perfectly poached egg is ready to be eaten.
Poppy, who has also done cooking tutorials for BBC Food has said poached eggs can be delicious with lots of meals and do not just need to be reserved for breakfast.
In one video, she said: “They are brilliant on salads, on top of an egg benedict or one of my favourite ways when I was younger was having it with smoked haddock, crushed potatoes, and a little bit of spinach. It’s a beautiful way to add an egg to every meal.”
In Poppy’s TikTok video comment section, Max thanked Poppy for the help and wrote: “Woooooo omg I will literally follow this tutorial every time yay thank you.”
