During an eye-opening appearance on This Morning, MasterChef judge John Torode revealed his go-to "chef's trick" for whipping up the perfect batch of poached eggs, sharing two distinct yet effective cheffy methods.
Wowing This Morning presenters Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary, celebrity chef John demonstrated precisely how a professional would poach eggs to order in a restaurant, as well as how they'd cook in advance and reheat for hundreds of hungry customers.
Kicking off with his cooking-to-order method, John, who is originally from Melbourne, Australia, explained that poached eggs have both foodie "friends" and "enemies", and one particular "enemy" will no doubt take some home cooks by surprise.
1. Cooking eggs to order
John revealed: "The deal with a poached egg is it has friends and it has enemies - the friend of a poached egg is vinegar. You take boiling water - or just a rolling boil - it's not boiling frantically.
"You take two tablespoons of vinegar and put it in the water. Never ever put salt in it - if you put salt in with a poached egg, the egg will actually disintegrate and blow apart.
"So here's the next trick, a lot of people worry about putting an egg into boiling water. Take a tiny bit of vinegar and put it into a bowl, break the egg into the bowl with the vinegar."
He continued: "Now, if you understand cooking, cooking has three processes - heat, salt (something that is cured), and vinegar (something that is pickled). What we're doing, is cooking the outside of the egg a tiny bit by using the vinegar first before putting it in the water.
"The water is not frantically boiling, it's a light bubble. When we put the egg in, rather than worrying about breaking the egg across boiling water and burning our fingers, take the bowl and drop the egg into the water very gently.
"You can do the same for another egg on the other side of the pan, just watch your heat, make sure it doesn't get too hot, and then don't touch them."
It was at this point that Alison interjected, asking whether it was a good idea to give the eggs a stir. John clarified that you should "never" do this.
John explained: "The yolk goes to the bottom. and the white needs to fold up to the top. If you swirl it. all that's happening is the white is getting lost."
According to John, the eggs should float to the top of the water after a couple of minutes, and should be left to cook for an additional minute until the egg is lovely and soft.
Once ready, John advised removing the eggs from the water, and placing them on some paper where you can remove excess moisture by "rolling it back on your spoon", making sure not to get the paper stuck.
2. Cooking eggs in advance
Addressing Alison and Dermot, John revealed: "In restaurants, if you're doing eggs, for a brunch with 300 people, you can't poach eggs to order. So what you do is you poach your eggs almost until completely cooked, drop them into ice-cold water, and leave them in water overnight.
"The ones [eggs] you’'e eating now - weren't cooked to order, I just put them into warm water. They were only in there [warm water] for two minutes to reheat them."
After Alison admitted she felt "a little bit cheated" after learning this insider info, John replied, "Don't feel cheated it's just a chef's trick."
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