I can’t think of a single egg preparation more finicky than poaching. Do it correctly and you’ll get a plump, oval balloon you could easily mistake for an orb of fresh mozzarella, but do it the wrong way and you’ll end up with a hurricane of wispy egg white surrounding a naked, boiled egg yolk. Luckily, the OG culinary goddess, Julia Child, gave us a trick for nailing a perfectly shaped poached egg, I just made it a tad bit lazier.
The perfect poached egg has rounded edges, a pudgy, oval shape, and loses little egg white to the water. It’s almost as tall as a boiled egg, but the texture is distinctly different, all silky and custard-like. Julia’s trick was to use a pin to poke a hole in the egg shell and briefly boil the entire egg, shell and all, for 10 seconds. Once that’s done, she would remove the egg from the hot tub, crack the egg, and poach as usual. The idea is that the brief dunk in boiling water just begins to set the very outer layer of egg white. When you peel it, the white should hold its shape instead of splaying along the bottom of the pan, or shedding egg white into the water.
The pinhole allows air to escape the egg in a controlled manner when the egg is plunged into the boiling water, so it doesn’t explode in a haphazard way. I don’t keep pins in the kitchen to poke my egg shells, and with a cat that has a tendency to eat miscellaneous inedible objects in the kitchen, I’m not inclined to start. Instead of poking, I gently crack it on the counter.
I use the gentlest tap to make the smallest crack possible. Once the egg is cracked, use a slotted spoon to lower it into the boiling water. (I also add a teaspoon of vinegar to the boiling water to speed up coagulation, but that’s optional.) Count to ten and take the egg out with the same spoon. It doesn’t have to be a perfect 10 count, I actually waited about 30 seconds for one of my trials and it worked just as well. You’ll see the crack expand in the water and maybe even a small bubble of white will escape, and that’s okay, 10 seconds isn’t enough time for anything to cook completely. Remove the egg and let it cool slightly on a dish towel while you reduce the heat of the water to get a gentle simmer. Crack the egg into a shallow bowl (or if you’re daring, crack it right into the water). The egg will not look any different than a raw egg. You’ll think nothing happened, but it did. Poach the egg as usual.
What I witnessed was nothing short of witchcraft. The egg held onto its white with a tenacity I had never seen before, and the shape of the egg was oval and rotund, like the kind of poached egg you’d see in a glossy food magazine. The water stayed clear, and I was able to monitor my egg’s cooking progress, and pull it out the moment it was done.
This pre-boiling step only adds a few seconds to the average poaching method, and it’s time well spent. Anyone having difficulty with wispy whites floating away will absolutely benefit from this pre-poach. One word of warning: Do not walk away during the ten second boil. I know it seems obvious to wait, as ten seconds goes by fast, but I’m also aware that multi-tasking is awfully tempting. Much more than 30 seconds and the egg white will begin to set and cling to that inner membrane next to the shell, and you’ll lose it when you crack the egg. But if you can pause and give the egg your undivided attention, the ten second crack-and-boil is the ticket to your next beautiful poach.