1 post tagged “cling film”

When I was in London last week my father told me about a trick he'd heard of for poaching eggs perfectly with relatively little effort. This morning I gave it a go and compared it against the traditional method. To poach an egg using my father's method you will need:

• A pan of boiling water
• Eggs
• A small mug
• Butter, margarine or vegetable oil
• Cling film
• Salt and pepper

Take a sheet of cling film and press it into the small mug, then lubricate the film with a bit of butter, margarine or vegetable oil. Crack your egg into the cling film whole and twist the cling film closed. Lift the little package into the boiling water and wait for up to four minutes. I waited for about three as I like the yolks to be nice and gooey.

Lift the cling film package out of the water and peel it open. You may want to do this on a towel. Then lift the eggs from the cling film to wherever you want to serve it and season it with salt and pepper. As you can see, the resulting egg is fairly circular and no mass has been lost to the water.

Furthermore, it doesn't taste of vinegar - or cling film.

I also decided that I should compare the cling film method against the traditional method of cracking an egg into some boiling water and waiting for it to cook. I did this and was not surprised to find that a lot of the albumen bloomed into very thin sheets and broke away from the main body of the egg.

Again, I waited about three minutes for the egg to cook before lifting it to a serving dish. It was a little smaller and a little more messy but tasted about the same as the egg that had been cooked in cling film.

I think I prefer the results of the cling film method but it is a little bit more awkward as it involves a few extra stages and is not so easy to use if you want to do several eggs at once.