Preparation
The egg is cracked into a bowl of any size, and then gently slid into a pan of simmering water and cooked until the egg white has mostly solidified, but the yolk remains soft. It is quite common for a small pat of butter or margarine to be added to the container for the egg, to prevent the egg sticking to its container. The 'perfect' poached egg has a runny yolk, with a hardening crust and no raw white remaining.
Fresh eggs will yield the best results. Broken into simmering water, the white will cling to the yolk, resulting in cooked egg white and runny yolk.
To prevent dispersion of the white of the egg, a small amount of vinegar may be added to the boiling water. Stirring the water vigorously to create a vortex may reduce dispersion. Special pans, with several small cups, allow a number of eggs to be poached at the same time. Other methods of producing poached eggs, such as using cling film to keep the egg perfectly formed have been documented.
If the eggs are at room temperature, the cooking time is 2 mins 30s to 2 mins 40s. If the eggs are taken from a refrigerator, then a longer time of about 3mins is required, though the exact time depends on the size of the egg, and other factors such as altitude and the design of the poaching apparatus. Dipping the eggs into cold water for a few seconds immediately after taking them out of the boiling water helps prevent over-cooking.
Read more about this topic: Poached Egg
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