When I was about 11, I got it into my head that the chicest thing a preteen girl could possibly do is get really great at poaching eggs.
I tried the whirlpool method, agitating the water into a tornado-like vortex before I added the eggs.
I tried adding vinegar to the water, which mildly reduced the number of foamy wisps clinging to my food ― but I never quite got them perfect.
After learning my peers weren’t suitably impressed by what I assumed would be a universally respected skill, I gave up my poached egg quest.
But having read the responses to Redditor Effective_Ad_5664′s post, shared into the r/Cooking subreddit, I might pick it back up again.
What’s the best way to poach eggs?
“I have been trying to poach an egg for YEARS. I have not once been able to get it right,” the poster said.
“It always turns out into a giant mess in the pot. I tried the vortex trick, didn’t work, I tried just gently stirring it, didn’t work, someone said to use vinegar, I’m allergic to vinegar. Using a ladle? It sticks to the ladle.”
The relatable complaint got some helpful comments, including a top entry which reads: “Here’s what I heard was the most foolproof method: crack the egg into a sieve and let the loosest parts drain off... no vinegar needed.”
The commenter, u/xylofone, added that they’d learned the trick from former restaurant worker, James Beard award-winning cookbook author, and New York Times columnist Kenji López-Alt.
In a video, the expert shared “the difficult part of poaching eggs is that eggs have a white, a yolk ― but if you look carefully the whites are actually kind of in their own little sac.”
The white surrounding that is “loose and float[s] around inside the shell,” he adds, so “you wanna separate that loose white from the more firm white” with a sieve,
Kenji said you get a “better texture and better flavour” without vinegar too.
Commenters seemed pretty on board with the advice
“This is what finally worked for me, after all the vortexing/vinegaring/ladling ‘magic tricks’ failed,” a Redditor commented, adding “it makes a world of difference.”
To be fair, Kenji does say he’d use a vortex in a restaurant and makes a small one at home too for “nice and clean”-looking poached eggs.
Kenji adds that you have to flip poached eggs “at least once” for the best results.
I’m definitely giving this a go...