How to poach an egg

Eggsplanation

The trick with eggs - poached, scrambled, boiled, fried or coddled - is to be gentle, especially with the heat.

And eggs are cheap - so you can afford to buy eggs that are gentle on their mothers. A dozen cage free eggs weighing in at 700g cost $3.50. Less than 30 cents an egg.

And a poached egg is a prince at that price.

The way I do it is basically the Heston method with a few changes.

First, I don’t use a thermometer, and second I don’t put my plate in upside down. I found with the plate upside down, the eggs tend to slide off and end up off touching side of the pan, which defeats the purpose.

Most good quality plates have a rim at the bottom, which lifts the surface away from the direct heat, and this combined with removing the saucepan from the heat does the trick.

What you need

• Bread-and-butter plate
• Saucepan just large enough for the plate
• Slotted spoon
• Small bowl
• Spatula

Method

Pour about 6cm of water into the saucepan and bring to boil. Once it’s boiling, remove from heat. Wait 1 minute, then slide in the plate right-side up.

Prepare the egg by breaking it into a slotted spoon over a bowl or paper towel so that the watery yolk is discarded. With the slotted spoon, gently slide the egg into the water - you do this by lowering the spoon into the water, then gently letting the egg slide out onto the plate.

If you are doing more than one egg (and you generally will be) take note of which is first, second and third so that you can remove them in that order. For more than that, you will need a new batch - or two saucepans.

Once the eggs are in, I put the toast on. In three minutes the first egg will be ready. Remove from the water with a spatula - if you want it to be really fancy, you can trim the edges of the egg. But, as you can see, I can’t be bothered doing this - I just want to eat it.

Season with salt and pepper. Also a tomato salsa is nice. I also find tamarind sauce or chutney goes very, very well with egg.