Poached eggs

I posted on FaceBook the other day about poached eggs. I love poached eggs, the white firm and the yolk runny. And sitting on a piece of toast. It’s comfort food for me.

After I left home and went down to visit Mum and Dad, staying for the weekend or overnight, Dad inevitably woke me with a poached egg.

I can tell you now, it’s quite intimidating to open your sleep-encrusted eyes to find a poached egg beside the pillow looking at you, with a beaming Dad behind it. I never felt like eating less. I much prefer to be up a few hours before breakfast. But of course I never told Dad that. He had two dishes that he cooked to perfection porridge and eggs. So in winter, it was a bowl of porridge that looked at me as I opened my eyes.

But on FaceBook the other day, I said this:
I’m getting quite fed up with cookery sites that suggest the best way to cook a poached egg is by wrapping it in cling film so it keeps its shape. They also often dismiss poaching an egg in water with a dash of vinegar, saying “Who wants an egg that tastes of vinegar?” 

That’s utter rubbish, and shows they’ve never actually tried it themselves because poached eggs cooked that way don’t taste of vinegar in the slightest. Eggs have a membrane around them that prevents that. 

As for wrapping them in cling film, do we really need more microplastics in our bodies? Plastic wrap is not meant to be heated. It has the potential to leach unnecessary potentially harmful chemicals into your food and into your body.

I got a heap of responses, and several of them asked how I poach an egg. This is what I said:

I bring a small pot of water with a splash of vinegar to the boil, then I pop my bread in the toaster. I take the boiling water off the stove, turn down the jet, swirl the water with a spoon, crack the egg and drop it carefully in, and put the pot back on the stove. When the toast pops, I lift the egg out with a slotted spoon and look at it. If there is still a transparent-looking jelly-like spot, that’s a bit of uncooked white, so I lower the egg back in to the water, turn off the jet and let the egg sit for a little while — half a minute or more, depending on the size of the egg. With a bit of practice you’ll get it right every time. But I’m only cooking for one, so if you want to cook more at once, google it.

When I think the egg is cooked, I lift it out of the saucepan with a slotted spoon and check it to see if there’s any jelly-like transparentish spots in the white, and if there are, I lower the egg back into the water and give it a little more time.

MaryAnne Ross added:
You can also put an egg in a cup with a rounded bottom and microwave for 20 seconds- perfect poached egg when you’ve been writing too long and now starving!

Rebecca Cleggers said:
I had poached eggs on toast with vegemite this morning. Poached the “old fashioned” way, just like dad taught me: water and vinegar, give the boiling water a swirl, crack in the egg (or 2, as I did), reduce water to a simmer. Boom, beautifully poached eggs. The cling wrap thing is stupid and unnecessary.

Diane Farr Golling said:
In the USA we’ve been told for decades not to put cling wrap in the microwave. Toxins!! In fact, unless the container specifically states that it is microwave safe, we are not supposed to put plastic in the MW at all.

So it was a long and interesting exchange of egg-cooking methods. Do you like poached eggs?