Popular television cook Nigella Lawson has shared the secret to perfecting poached eggs – after admitting she at first found them frightening.
“One of the things I was convinced I could never do was poach an egg,” she revealed during a talk at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. “I had such a fear of egg poaching out of proportion to the task,” reports The Mirror.
The celebrity cook – who insists she is a “home cook” instead of a chef – explained that she learnt how to poach the perfect egg from a French cook and is now an expert in the area. “I have cracked it now. I crack the egg in a tea strainer over a cup and all the very watery bits go underneath,” she explains. “I push it into another cup and I add a teaspoon of lemon juice to the egg white in the cup. I put it into the water, which is almost turned off, and I leave it in there for three or four minutes and I sometimes with my slotted spoon encourage the white to come up in shape. I never do anything with the water.”
Lawson, who has sold more than 12 million cook books around the world, went on to discuss her other cooking flaws.
“I feel I have eaten much better lemon meringue pies than I have made. I hope that will change one day and it made me come up with a very good lemon meringue cake.”
She added that she doesn’t aspire to be a chef. “I am not a chef, and I don’t try and cook like a chef. I wouldn’t be able to do it and I don’t have any knife skills.”
The humble chef also said she disliked fancy meals and would happily eat home-cooked dishes forever more.