Thursday 30 August 2007

How to poach an egg

I bought the September Delicious magazine yesterday, and read Sydney chef Matt Moran's article on how to poach an egg. I thought I already knew. Drop a nice fresh egg in a shallow pan full of very gently simmering water with a dash of vinegar. Leave until white is cooked, drain and serve. But the draining can be a pain, and you can end up with soggy toast. Anathema! Kitchen paper helps, but I've been trying other methods recently and been disappointed. Little gadgets float away, or don't contain the egg properly; the microwave leads to raw bits or explosions. It's always back to Mum & Gran's method.

But Matt Moran's method is a neat trick. You get your saucepan of water simmering as usual - but no need for vinegar or salt. Crack each egg into a gladwrap lined cup, tie up the glad wrap in a knot, leaving as little air as possible, and lower the parcels into the water. Leave for 4 minutes, then cut open the knotted gladwrap and tip the egg onto your plate. It worked really well. Except maybe next time I'll add the tiniest drop of vinegar to make it JUST like Mum's.

We polished off some leftovers tonight. I had the rest of the baked peas with poached eggs, leftover roast sweet potato and turkish toast; the Bloke ate the chilli. The baked peas went brilliantly with poached eggs; I think that recipe's a keeper.


Cooking today: Leftovers.

2 comments:

Adski said...

I tried this one too... however both times the egg stuck in the glad wrap! Maybe I should try oiling the glad wrap first.

Mark S said...

I tried this for the first time, one with oil and one without - and I couldn't tie the know easily so I used a stapler.

Result: One egg fell out of the glad wrap as I lifted it out, could be due to the staple, could be the oil weakened the glad wrap, but when it fell into the water it was whole and firm (and runny inside).
The other egg was intact, I cut the top off with scissors and found it was a little sticky but the glad wrap came away clean - both eggs perfect!