Julia Child's Trick For Easy Poached Eggs Changes Everything
People tend to think of poached eggs as one of the most difficult ways to cook eggs. There is so much fuss over poaching eggs to the point that it makes it seem kind of like an unattainable breakfast. There are tons of hacks and tips out there that explain how to accomplish this feat more easily — things like salting the water, straining your eggs, adding a dash of vinegar, or swirling the water to get the eggs just right (via Food52).
We're here to tell you there's a much easier way, and it includes exactly none of those steps. In fact, Julia Child's trick for easy poached eggs is super fast and easy to do. The one thing Child did before poaching her eggs was to simply boil the eggs for around 10 seconds. The idea is that this is just enough to help the eggs hold their shape when they go into the water, but they weren't boiled long enough to be cooked. Child also pricked the big end of the eggs before boiling to allow any air to escape, which means the shell shouldn't crack while boiling (via HuffPost).
Why other notable hacks for poached eggs don't work
Food52 swears by doing nothing more than cracking your eggs, sliding them carefully into the water, and letting them cook for three to five minutes. No hacks and no tricks. While Julia Child's method does help a lot, Food52's reasons for not using all of the other main hacks come from sound reasoning.
One of the biggest hacks for poaching eggs is to add vinegar to the water. The idea is that the vinegar helps the egg whites to firm up while they cook, but it actually results in overcooked egg whites, as they cook faster than the yolk itself. The loose egg whites that become stringy are trimmed off anyway. The vinegar only firms up the egg whites that are already cooking fast around the yolk. So, skip the vinegar next time for better-poached eggs.
You might want to skip salting the water too. It tends to make the eggs chalky, so not exactly something you want from your poached eggs.
Give Julia Child's method a shot, and skip everything else — you should get some pretty stellar results that way.