The perfect poached egg is a thing of pure joy but the traditional techniques can be hard to master. Here's a simple way to poach an egg in clingfilm, and it means you can make several at once!
You'll need one small bowl, dariole or ramekin per egg.
Place a small square of clingfilm into each ramekin, tucked down to the bottom and draped over the sides. Remember, it needs to be large enough to encase the egg.
Spray each ramekin lightly with oil. If you don't have spray, you can brush lightly instead.
Crack a large egg into each of the ramekins.
Bring the cling film up and gather together so that you can lift the egg out of the ramekin. Twist, taking care not to leave an air pocket at the top, then clip in place with a paper clip. Hair pins or even string work too.
If you used a very large piece of cling film, you might need to trim off any excess with scissors. This make it easier to see what’s going on in the pan.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add a tsp of white wine vinegar and drop the eggs into the pan. Boil for three minutes.
Fish the eggs out of the water with a slotted spoon or spatula and place them on a plate lined with kitchen paper, which will soak up any water.
Take one egg and cut off the twisted clingfilm, just below the paper clip. Gently unwrap the egg just enough to see if it's properly cooked. If the whites aren't quite set, you can drop all the eggs, including the partially unwrapped one, back into the water for another 30 seconds.
If they're done, you can fully unwrap all of the eggs.
The shape is a little volcano-like on top with this method, so I like to flip them over to serve so that you get a more rounded presentation.
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Notes
A couple of notes before we get started. Try to get the freshest eggs you can - the fresher the egg the less runny the whites. Not such a big deal for batters, but of huge importance when poaching if you don't want to end up with wispy strings and broken yolks.Egg size also will make some difference to cooking times and even an extra minute can make the difference between light and soft whites becoming hard and rubbery, so keep an eye on your eggs so that can see when they've reached perfection.