How does one make a perfect poached egg?

Oddly enough, what works best for me is to crack the egg open, gently slide it into a well-buttered small dessert dish from my grandmother’s second best china and microwave it. Comes out perfect every time, although you have to experiment a bit at first depending on the wattage of your microwave.

Before that I had a special pan with three non-stick cups that was specifically designed for making perfect poached eggs.

Woah! A newbie just told Gail to Google.

Something tells me that Gail has already Googled, and that she is now looking for real, human answers.

Probably the alter ego of a pouter with an axe to grind.

Okay, gail. Here you go…

Use an 8” to 10” skillet filled nearly to the rim with water

Add 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar and 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil.

Crack each egg into a cup (to pour into the water).

Simultaneously lower lips of cups to the water and tip eggs into the boiling water.

Cover skillet and remove from heat.

Cook until medium firm (4 minutes). Add 1/2 minute for firmer finish or larger egg. Subtract 1 minute for softer or medium-sized egg.

Use a slotted spoon to lift and drain each egg. For extra drying, blot with paper towel.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Using a skillet allows the egg to hit bottom faster, giving it a better shape. The vinegar lowers the pH, which allows the water to boil and the egg to cook at a lower temperature. The salt is more or less a necessary ingredient for flavor. Removing from heat keeps the egg from feathering due to the action of the boil. Taken from Cook Illustrated’s Best Recipe Cookbook.

Cook’s Illustrated, I mean.

@gailcalled: thanks for asking this
@kevbo: thanks for answering this

I love poached eggs more than life itself….

Poached eggs: I use a saucepan, filled almost to the top. I put in different kinds of vinegar, most recently Bragg’s (with the mother!). I don’t let the water boil, but get it almost to a boil, and keep it below boiling—so it cooks gently, and you don’t get that wild egg white thing. I cook it until the yolks look kind of solid—this is something you essentially have to be watching the whole time. Salt and pepper after it’s removed from the pan, placed on a piece of buttered toast (some kind of great bread) and sometimes I have it with plain (whole far) yogurt and tomato salsa. Yum.

@Darwin: I was led to believe that one should never cook an egg in the MV without pricking the yolk first. Isn’t it supposed to explode?

Really picky chefs trim the edges of their poached eggs with sharp scissors.

@gailcalled – No, it doesn’t explode. Now if you put the egg into the microwave still in the shell it does indeed explode, as my son has found out.

And the eggs I produce in the microwave with my grandmother’s dessert dishes don’t need trimming. The end product is perfectly circular and just the right size to fit nicely on an English Muffin (with some Canadian bacon and Hollandaise).

For a while I was cooking a cracked egg in the microwave in a “large” coffee cup. Made perfectly circular eggs, like the ones on an Egg McMuffin. Really fast, and nice.

Haven’t done it lately just because I feel like microwave cooking is just bland. It’s better just for heating things up. I could be biased though.