Cooking 1How To Poach An Egg

Fill your pot with about 4 inches of water and bring up to a gently rolling boil over slightly higher than medium heat. The gently rolling part is important because if it's so hot that it's spit/splatter or even rolling boiling, the initial disturbance to the egg hinders proper poaching

Crack the eggshell, and holding it as close to the water as you can without hurting yourself, gently open the shell and release the egg into the water. If you are very sensitive to heat, you can crack the egg into a bowl and then gently pour the egg into the water from a safer distance for your hands.

Don't touch it. At least not for a good two minutes depending on the size of the egg. The one pictured here was a jumbo straight out of the fridge and it took about 4 minutes total cooking time. During this cooktime, some of the white will separate from the rest of the egg. This is to be expected.

After 2 or 3 minutes (again depending on the size and temperature of the egg), when it appears at first glance that all of the white has turned opaque, take a spoon or spatula and stir very gently in a clockwise circular motion along the outer edges of the pot, using the actual pot as a guide for your spoon or spatula, and being careful not to disturb the egg(s).

If the egg is done, it will usually separate from the bottom of the pot by itself, and when you lift it out of the water, you will see that while all the white is opaque and cooked through, the yolk is still runny and jiggly underneath.

Sometimes, the egg gets stuck to the bottom of the pot. In which case, you take a spatula and swiftly scrape it off the bottom of the pan using one quick motion, holding the scraping edge of the spatula down along the bottom surface. This makes sure you get as much of the egg as possible while not disturbing the yolk, which should be closer to the top than the bottom