Mastering the poached egg can seem like a culinary Everest – but these simple steps could be your guide to avoiding a kitchen disaster.
From too runny to solid – it can take years to perfect the art of poaching an egg. But one influencer insists her fail-safe trick will take your traditional English breakfast to new heights. And it only takes minutes.
Food blogger ‘Sarah’, using TikTok as her platform, reveals her solution is no more complicated than utilising a stainless steel ladle – a tool you’d typically use for dishing up soup or stew. Impressively, she argues there’s an entire science behind this too, which might just outdo easier microwave techniques.
“Here’s how to perfectly poach an egg in a stainless steel ladle and the science behind it,” she explained on her @halfbatchbaking page. She added: “The unique properties that make stainless steel corrosion-resistant also make it a poor conductor of heat.
“This in turn, leads to uneven heating and may resolve in hot spots of certain areas causing the eggs to stick. It also appears to have a smooth texture, but it actually has microscopic bumps and grooves that food can get stuck in. So, here’s how to properly use a metal ladle.”
To begin with, Sarah suggests pre-warming the ladle by holding it over a hob-boiling pot of water. After a few minutes, a small drizzle of oil should be added.
While Sarah doesn’t explicitly say what oil, Cookist, another blogger, has hailed olive oil as a flavour enhancer. She explained: “Hot oil is less viscous than cold and it will flow better, getting in those grooves.”
The innovative blogger then demonstrates her technique by cracking an egg into a sieve above a ladle, allowing the whites to drain through before gently placing the yolk on top. This assembly is then carefully lowered into boiling water.
“The hot oil will start to denature (breakdown) the proteins in egg whites,” she also added. “As the proteins breakdown they bond to each other going from a liquid to a solid. The hot oil prevents the proteins from bonding to the atoms in the metal, which is what causes the egg to stick to the ladle.”
According to Sarah, the egg should remain in the ladle for about five or six seconds, or just until it appears to set. A gentle tilt of the ladle is then all that’s needed to release the egg into the simmering water.
While eggs typically take around three minutes to poach, Sarah suggests a slightly shorter time of two-and-a-half minutes for an idyllic runny yolk. She concluded with confidence: “It should easily slip out and you’ll be left with a perfectly poached egg.”
Sarah’s method has since garnered countless comments on TikTok, with various users also keen to try out the hack for themselves. One wrote: “I think this video will finally allow me to poach an egg,” as others chimed in: “Oh I love this poached eggs approach.”
