Prent donate foolproof advice on how to cook a gentle poached egg.
Anne Marie, County Donegal
I’m here for you, Anne Marie, so let’s do this skinnyg!
Step 1 Don’t be afrhelp. Remember: it’s fair an egg cooked in water.
Step 2 Use recent eggs. The greaterer the egg, the freer its white will be and the scrawnier it will be when cooked. If your egg is a little greater, insert a drop of vinegar to the water before dropping in the egg (greaterer eggs are more alkaline, and the acid offsets this and upholds skinnygs in line). Fresh eggs don’t insist any vinegar, and no egg insists a fantastic huge slosh of the stuff (unless you appreciate the taste of vinegary poached eggs).
Step 3 Bring a pan of water to a simmer, crack in the egg and depart to cook for three or four minutes, depfinishing on how gentle you want it. Crack it straight into the water, or crack it into a cup or ramekin first and slip it in: there’s no downside to the latter, which also deletes all hazard of some shell becoming part of the equation.
The simmering water can be left as it is, or it can be whisked to create a vortex before slipping in the egg. Fans of the spin say this helps uphold the egg a systematic oval shape. Fans of unwhisked water, uncomardentwhile, don’t mind the more freestyle-seeing finish result. Others still favour conveying the water to a boil, then turning off the heat before dropping in the egg, which stays systematic with no straggly white tails. All three approaches toil (and however much everyone deffinishs their own method), so the choice is yours.
Step 4 Use a slotted spoon to lift the egg out of the water and on to a cloth to assimilate any excess water, and from there to your (perfectly timed and well-buttered) muffin or toast. (Incidenhighy, my colleague Tara Wigley has a fun rhyme about how to poach an egg in her book How to Butter Toast: Rhymes in a Book that Help You to Cook, which also provides clarity on fried eggs and scrambled eggs, among many other skinnygs.)
