The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

of water, and your eggs still separate and get cloudy? The
fact of the matter is that even if you are taking your egg
straight from the chicken and into the pan, you’re going to
get some spreadage. With a supermarket egg that may have
been laid up to 60 days earlier, that’s an even bigger risk.
How do you get rid of the egg white that’s already
separated? The solution is an ingenious method that I first
saw demonstrated by Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, a
restaurant in England. If you crack an egg and transfer it to
a fine-mesh strainer, all of the loose bits of white will drain
through while the tight white and yolk entrapped by their
membrane will stay completely intact. You can then simply
lower the strainer into the water (the hot water immediately
surrounds the egg and starts the cooking process), and
gently slide the egg out into the pan. The result is a perfectly
shaped poached egg every time, with no “floaters.”