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Comment by PMan74 | Hacker News Reader

> But recipes, for all their precision and completeness, are poor teachers. They tell you what to do, but they rarely tell you why to do it.

This drives me crazy about recipes e.g. adding vinegar to poaching water is recommended in lots of perfect poached eggs guides but few explain why (makes the whites firm even faster to prevent them from dispersing in the water). It's really 'teach a man to fish' kind of stuff, knowing the why gives more flexibility.

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That's why I loved cookings shows like Good Eats by Alton Brown or ones with Heston Blumenthal. They approach cooking from a more scientific approach in that they explain the why (and with Good Eats often a funny demonstration).

And with the knowing why things are done, you can use that to experiment a bit more yourself.

I'm thankful Good Eats is coming back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf3dwtC2c6c

:-)

I loved Good Eats and was devastated when they canceled it. Brown actually teaches the why to his recipes, not just the how and what. I probably built my cooking kits up from things he recommended and used during each show.

He is apparently working on a reboot - I think it's due out sometime this year or early next year.

From my experience, the amount of vinegar required to see an actual difference is enough to change the flavor of the eggs. Try creating a vortex in your water and placing the egg inside [1] (although they still use a "drop of vinegar')

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/se...

An even better technique (I tried lots) is to put the eggs in boiling water for 20-30s before breaking and poaching them. It will start the coagulation process of the egg whites, making it much more viscous when you actually do break them. This causes the egg whites to keep together and not spread in the water too quickly. Result is a nicer, rounder poached egg.

That's an interesting idea. Do you leave the eggs to cool prior to breaking or are the cool enough to be handled after 20s?

The shell quickly cools down and you should be able to handle it pretty soon after taking them out.

I tried that recently after reading it on here, and the result was a thin layer of cooked white stuck to the inside of the shell, while the remainder of the white was no firmer. This tallies with my expectations based on thermal gradients. Am I doing it wrong?

Are the eggs room temperature to begin with? That seems important to me... Otherwise perhaps vary the duration. I've had great success with this method but YMMV.

Yes, I always keep my eggs room temp.

I don't see how any modulation of the timing can produce anything other than a thicker or thinner layer of white stuck to the inside of the shell. What exactly happens when you do it - does all the white come out? Do you use older eggs perhaps? The older the egg, the less the shell sticks - but the more it disintegrates in water, so I always try and use fresh ones or poaching...

Kenji Lopez-Alt's method is the best I've come across[1]. His book is mentioned in the linked article as well, I've not read it but it sounds good!

[1]: https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/how-to-poach-eggs-easy-w...

Fresh eggs, yeah, that does help. But if your eggs are slightly older you can still try the trick of putting them a few seconds in hot water. And if your eggs are fresh the results in my experience are also improved with this method, without the need for a strainer.

This is the only way I have been able to get reliably poached eggs every time. All other methods seem to produce the wispy cloudy mess at some stage.

There is another technique I have seen of breaking the egg on to a cling film pouch, and then securing it, and poaching the pouch in water.

You can buy egg poaching pouches, they work but it seems terribly wasteful though, given most of the other methods seem to work well enough

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poachies-Non-Stick-Poaching-Bags-Wh...

I tried poached eggs with and without vinegar a number of times and could never detect a difference.

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