This Easy Trick Changed How I Make Poached Eggs—Now I'm a Pro

While I consider myself to be a pretty competent home cook, poached eggs have always been my Achilles heel. I’ve tried swirling the water, adding vinegar to the water, using perfectly-size ramekins to drop the eggs into the water—nothing has worked. I’ve always ended up with stringy egg water and a bruised ego.

But all that has changed thanks to Genevieve Ko’s ingenious poached egg recipe published in New York Times Cooking. In fact, to my disbelief, I got a perfectly poached batch of eggs on my very first try.

The Easy Trick for Perfectly Poached Eggs for a Crowd

Ko’s primary trick is to use a tall-sided skillet for poaching the eggs instead of the saucepan most other methods require. However, her recipe has a few other unique recommendations that are also worth mentioning.

First, you fill the skillet with an inch and a half of water and bring that to a boil over medium-high heat. Then, you place the whole eggs, uncracked and in their shells, into the water with a slotted spoon (yes, you read that right). You cook them for 15 to 20 seconds only. Be sure not to leave them in the water for any longer, as speaking from experience, they’ll be tough to crack afterwards.

Next, add a teaspoon of white distilled vinegar to the water, and crack your eggs into the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low to yield a gentle simmer. The recipe recommends doing this after adding the eggs, but I did so before I added the eggs, and it worked great. Cook them for three to six minutes, depending on how firm you like your yolks.

To check the cook on your yolks, Ko explains that “very runny yolks will wobble like a water balloon; standard runny yolks will feel soft but set; firm yolks will feel solid.” I poached mine for about four minutes, and the eggs were runny but not as much as I’d like, so next time I plan to poach them for just three minutes. When the eggs are at the consistency you like, use the slotted spoon to remove them, transferring them to a paper towel to gently pat dry. 

How to Serve Perfectly Poached Eggs

From there, you can use these perfectly poached eggs in eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine, avocado toast, fried rice, or even a hearty salad. I topped a chef’s-style salad with mine when I tried the recipe, and they were delicious.

The method is also excellent for whipping up a big batch of poached eggs for a crowd, as you can cook six or more eggs at a time depending on the size of your skillet. That’s ideal for a festive weekend brunch. When using this recipe for entertaining, I recommend cooking your eggs for only three minutes, as they’ll likely carry-over cook. Keep them in a warm water bath until it’s time to serve them.

And, in the end, you don’t just have to stick to Ko’s unconventional recipe when poaching eggs in a skillet. Skillet lover Alice Medrich at Food52 skips preemptively cooking the uncracked eggs, and she also bails on the addition of vinegar, but I found that her method works as well!