Poaching Eggs?

I was watching "Gordon Ramsay's F Word" this morning while I was sipping on my coffee. For those of you who've never watched it, it's surprisingly pleasant. Ramsay's a lot more docile than he is on "Hell's Kitchen," and although he does his fair share of snipping at his guest chefs, he also spends a lot of time educating viewers on different things. Sometimes he'll present simple recipes (of course, what Ramsay calls "simple" is a 2 hour endeavor for most of us) or go to the local fishmarket. One episode saw him catching auks off a craggy cliff in Iceland, which sounds about 100x more fun than catching butterflies.

Anyway, in this morning's episode, he was talking about how to make the perfect poached eggs.

I don't know about you, but I can't poach eggs. Whenever I drop the egg in, the whites immediately splatter into an unsightly nest of white goop, and then things start foaming like crazy until I'm scrambling around for the heat dial. I know they sell little egg-shaped poaching dishes that are supposed to contain the mess, but I've never wanted to be That Guy that bought a set.

Being curious, I wanted to see what McGee and Rombauer recommended. Turns out, essentially the same things (Ramsay has a completely different and utterly brilliant technique that I'll share later). Perfectly poached eggs rely on the coagulation of the egg white, which has an insanely high protein content.

1. If you use fresh eggs, the whites are more likely to keep their shape.
2. By turning down your boiling water to a simmer, you won't get that nasty turbulence that shreds your egg whites into a pathetic splotch. (FYI, this tip does NOT help me. My eggs, simmering water or not... still tear themselves into a wretched mess.)
3. If you add salt and vinegar to the water, it helps coagulate the protein faster. Then again, McGee adds that this also tends to shred the egg whites, which kind of defeats the purpose, it seems.

Basically you have to use magic to poach an egg.

Here's where Gordon Ramsay comes in.

Once the water is at a simmer, he WHISKS the water, so you have this whirlpool. Then while the water is still swirling, he slowly pours the egg into the whirlpool, so that the egg whites wrap around the yolk, kind of like how those cotton candy machines wrap the candy around the paper sticks. The result (or at least, his result) is a perfectly egg-shaped white lump that looks like a smooth dollop of mozzarella.

Ramsay also advises directly plopping that egg into ice water, to firm up the whites and hold the shape.

Actually, at this point, I was curious whether or not he then reheated the egg before serving it. Putting it in ice water makes sense, but both McGee and Rombauer strongly advise to soak the egg in 150F water for 15 minutes, to kill any salmonella that might be lurking about. But since Ramsay put the poached egg into a hot soup, maybe he did reheat the egg before serving...

Anyway, it sounds like a really neat trick, and I'm really curious how well it works for amateurs like me. I'm fresh out of eggs, but I'm going to grab a carton on the way home from work and try it out. I'll let everyone know how well(???) it works.