Poached Eggs

After cooking lots of eggs low temp, I think perfectly cooked poached eggs are just as good, and easier to cook. But here’s both tested and perfected methods.

Every egg has loose white, tight white and yolk. Fresh eggs will have less loose white but they’ll still have some. The loose white is very watery and it’s what forms the stringy mess in the pot. Both these methods rely on discarding the loose white.

Poached Eggs

Pulled some tips from Kenji.

1. Heat water in a large pot to just below boil.
2. Crack eggs one by one into a fine mesh strainer.
3. Drain the loose whites then transfer the tight white and yolk to a bowl. As long as you don’t break the tight white you can put multiple eggs in the same bowl and they’ll stay separated.
4. Gently pour all eggs out of the bowl and into the barely simmering water at once. It’ll look like a disaster but wait, they’ll start to form as individual eggs.
5. Once they start to form, gently move them around with a slotted spoon. Make sure they don’t stick to the bottom.
6. Pull them out when the whites are just set.
7. Transfer to a tea towel to dry or into cold water to save for later. Cooked eggs can be kept chilled for a few days.
8. To reheat chilled eggs, transfer to 60°c (140°f) water for a couple minutes. There’s no ΔT so this isn’t time sensitive.

Low Temp Poached Eggs

1. Cook eggs in their shells at 62°c for 45min–1h.
2. Heat water in a large pot to just below boil.
3. Crack cooked eggs directly into a bowl of cold water. The white is only barely set when cooked at 62°c so cracking them into water suspends them and helps hold their shape. It also lets the loose whites separate from the formed whites.
4. Using a slotted spoon carefully lift each tightly formed egg out of the water (leaving the remaining loose whites behind) and into your pot of barely simmering water.
5. From here they should cook like poached eggs. Cooking time will vary depending on how long they stayed in the cold water.*
6. Transfer to a tea towel to dry then serve.

* Cracking the eggs straight into simmering water will result in a slightly thicker yolk as the center is already at 62°c when it first hits the water—it will cook more evenly and quickly. If you let the eggs fully chill in the water before finishing in simmering water, the center will reach serving temperature by the time the whites have set resulting in a slightly runnier yolk.

Different Temperature Eggs

Cook for an hour if eating without any further cooking.

• 57°c for 1h will completely pasteurize an egg but it will still be completely raw.
• 62°c for 1h is very runny but just cooked.
• 64°c for 1h will get you a set yolk.
• 70°c for 1h is effectively just hard boiled.

Eggs With a Temp Delta

If you don’t want to poach low temp eggs, cooking with a ΔT will set the whites more. As these have a ΔT you should dunk them in cold water as soon as they come out to stop the cooking.

75°c for 15min is perfect IMO. Some white will be set against the shell but enough will come with the yolk when you crack them onto toast. The yolk is similar to 64°c eggs with no ΔT.