Jacques Pépin: How To Properly Poach An Egg | KQED Food 

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I've watched this at least five times. Seems so simple but I pick up something new each time and my poached eggs are finally, after practice, acceptable. The masters always make it look so easy.

Mr. Pepin is a national treasure.

Everything and anything Jacques explains regarding cooking, I take straight to the bank! Thank you very very much, kind Sir!

He was and is still the best imo , old school artisan.

I love the ease and knowledge of technical terms and expertise, just flows so naturally. I learn, and Jacques is a great teacher.

Mr Jacques Pepin is great gift to America .

He is a treasure. He makes even a poached egg interesting and informative.

He elevates every simple thing to something special.

Oh I love Jacques Pepin, he is always a big cut above all other chefs. Such a wonderful sense of humor!

Brilliant, this is a real food show, no BS

I could listen to him talk all day 🥰

" this is top off the egg, this is bottom of the egg " Genius

He doesn’t even tornado the water and he does like 3 at a time. This dude is brilliant. My eggs would come out a mess if i didn’t swirl the water

I love the way he describes what he is doing and handles the food with his hands and tenderly, moves it in different steps to show us completely what to do, ❤ thanks Chef !❤

Food Network tells us we need to crack each egg into their own little bowls. Jacques Pepin shows us how to crack it directly into the water. He also shows us how to form the whites without using fancy equipment. I trust M. Pepin.

Imagine being invited to your good pal Jacques Pépin, one of the best chefs in the world's house and he tells you to go grab an egg in the water container in the fridge and put it on a toast for your breakfast.

I really miss Jacques and Julia cooking together. When I was very young you were both a large part of my culinary education. I used to laugh when she called him Jack, I think, just to get under the skin. Or when they would squabble over something like the proper amount of salt and pepper. Those two are a world treasure. It is so nice that we have their work on film to treasure for many years to come.

Love how he always cooks for real scenarios and always respects the difference in taste. Unlike typical TV cooks who go either 10/10 or shit.

He’s such an awesome TEACHER. Thank you!

I've learned a lot from this wise man. Experience is a teacher indeed.

I love to put these in the fridge as he says and then I lightly bread and deep fry them to reheat. It's a crisp on the outside, runny on the inside treat and is delicious served over a light asparagus salad or some creative breakfast creation. People are always delighted once they figure out what the hell it is, lol.

Jacques Pepin is the reason I love cooking.

I just finished lunch, but that yolk so perfectly cooked made me hungry again. What an artist this wonderful man is!!! Thank you, Chef!

I don't know if you'll understand what I'm feeling, but I feel that he's the food version of Bob Ross

I hate poached eggs, but my love and respect for Jacques, i have to watch it!

I’ve seen sooo many poached egg videos use different gimmicks like swirling the water...then the OG Jacques Pepin throws down how to actually do it like an absolute BOSS. This is as close to a mic drop as a cooking video gets 😄

His hands being so calm and certain while he is cooking remind me of my grandmother's hands as she cooks...

Great tip keeping a bunch cold in the fridge just before serving to a large number of guests! Better than slaving egg by egg while you are hungry yourself and getting the hunger dizzies standing over boiling water going through your carton of dozen eggs!

The way he described doing an egg with the shell on is exactly how I do mine, 6 minutes is perfect.

What a legend

A true master and teacher!

Eggs are amazing! So many options.

Inside should be about, like This - cuts open a perfectly poached egg!

One of the other commenters said it already. Jacques Pepin is a National Treasure!

Merci Jacques Pépin! Vivent la France et le Québec!

I'd love to have Mr. Pepin read me "The Princess Bride" xD

Just caught myself craving the life where I'm hanging out at Jacques Pepin's place first thing in the morning and he's like "help yourself to eggs, make my life easier"

This takes me back to Food Science I, when students learned about the chemistry of cooking eggs. We learned how many minutes it took to achieve tertiary denaturation of the albumin. If the yolk turned green for hard boiled, there was an interaction between the sulfur in the yolk and the iron in the white.

Yes, this looks correct. Anything that is simple yet complicated is sure to bring delight to the person who will devour it. Bravo!

I thought I was half decent at poaching eggs. Gave this a try and instantly saw that my prior poached egg game was amateur at best. This is the only way for me going forward. Thank you Jacques!

Never learned so much about poached eggs in so little time...just excellent!

I was given his book when I moved out on my own. Priceless information.

brrooo. My eggs never come out this perfect... maybe I should repeat the steps in a french accent... maybe that'll help

Your the best, always was and always will be.

I never knew that that's how professional cooks prepared poached eggs. I always assumed that they were cooked on the spot as required and served immediately. This video is a masterclass tutorial-many thanks Chef Jacques!

Jacques!! I used to see him on tv when I was little kid:) ❤️❤️ now I can actually try his recipes!

Awesome! ...poached eggs are deliciously like no other preparation. They truly are like a buttery cheese sauce....Divine...as a breakfast, snack, or for a healthy dinner with a vegetable accompaniment and decadent bread , or bruschetta and wine or sweet tea. Ummm ...., so good.....

Jacques Pepin is Nostalgia. I remember watching him every chance I got when I was young.

Best cooking show in history. M. Pepin is one of my heroes

if you have ever tried this, you will respect this man. lol

That is an institutional technique, at home we roll them right out of the bath, use pickle juice instead of straight vinegar, no sticking, no trimming... if you are slow they go from soft to medium. Hope your life is beautiful Jacque's ! Thank you for so many great lessons !

Oui, monsieur, you nailed it when you said supermarket eggs don't work this way. You know why? Because they are not so fresh! Also, the chickens are farmed in less than ideal conditions, making for a thinner membrane around the yolk and less albumin in the white. I was getting 'rags' in the water for years before I figured it out. Now we haved moved to the country, and our eggs come straight from a farm. Beautiful! I try again. Merci! 😀

Not that I would ever be so inpertinent& attempt to contradict the "Old Master"but recently i'v been using a fairly shallow(i think it w/b a soufle Pan)or a small Frying Pan,and i' v been poaching 4 or 6 eggs,no vortex or Vinegar and they have been coming out fine..Add some toast,some bacon, little Salad and u have a very healthy Breakfast or Lunch.👍. But Jacque is always worth watching,there's always something u can learn&use!...Experience is key!

I KNOW you will never read this, but it makes me feel better to say this...I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! You do all of your cooking SO PERFECTLY...and you are SO talented...and I LOVE YOU! I have NO other people I fan over but YOU!A AND I love your daughter and granddaughter!

this dudes a legend

The best advice ever....make sure the egg is cold! Thanks so much, Jacques! 🙏

I learned from my mother to use a saucepan, get the water to almost boiling, use a spoon to swirl the water and get it spinning and drop the egg in the middle. The swirling water keeps the egg from spreading. Been doing it that way for 35 years.

This is the first culinary video I’ve ever watched, out of thousands over many years, that had shared how to pick up a dish in restaurant application.

Lovely! I have a friend with cancer who has virtually no appetite. One of the few foods enjoys is eggs benedict. I was picturing trying to poach eggs and make hollandaise sauce at the same time. This solves that dilemma. Thank you.

Jacques i have been watching you since i was a small lad, and have used you're methods for yrs in my cooking!!!! THANKS you!! and HAPPY COOKING!!!

Today I made my first ever poached eggs and they came out amazing thanks to mr. Pépin!

Ah, he makes it look so easy! The Master!

I like how he tells you how the restaurants re-heat

Can you believe that Mr Peppin was Charles de Gaulle cook 60 years ago ? He's 80 when doing this poached egg video, Chapeau bas Tati.

The master...thanks for demonstrating perfect technique.

Thank you chef !! Your techniques is flawless

0:58 “the egg white is much better, holy shit” is what I heard at first

Every experience with you Maestro, is an education!!!

God bless you mister Pépin!

I have learned a great deal from Jacques more than from emeril always trust a french chef!!

Like your lessons, Jacques.

He is great, all classic stuff, relaxed, no hoohaa..

You R the best Jacques Pepin!

Very clean and neat explaination. İt looks very easy and this demonstrate the chef’s professional level; he is the best

I like how I went from watching a video of him just saying "omlett" to watching more and more of this man's cooking.

Makes it look so easy

Thank you so much I can do that now. Live in New Zealand. 😊

He is an international treasure.

What a pro. He makes it look so easy. He's had alot of practice.

aint no body got time for this, i say and 4.30 am watching this guy for about 40 minutes :D

I once worked for a chef who was a kind of seat of your pants, wing it kinda guy - which is fine and doable for 90% of the time - we were opening for brunch one Sunday after a multi week build up with our guests (I hate cooking brunch personally - it's probably the single most problematic menu to serve, full of pitfalls and grumpy, picky patrons sitting with their entire families impatiently tapping the table with their fingers, waiting for food) and we opened, as usual for brunch, with a packed house and an hour wait for a table. I asked my chef the previous week about what the menu would be and we came up with the fairly standard brunch menu and several kinds of Eggs Benedict. We were busily prepping right up to the morning before opening and I asked him about the poached egg prep. He looked at me incredulously and said "we'll poach them to order, classically, a la minute." I replied, "do you realize how incredibly hard that is? That's a disaster waiting to happen," and proceeded to describe this very same technique to him (which I had learned from years of watching Jacque) and had done countless times with other chefs. He chastised me and belittled me in front of the entire kitchen staff for saying this, questioning my skills and ability for suggesting such a thing and teased me about it for the rest of the day. The next morning, in front of a slammed dining room with a line out the door and thirty-something Benedict orders hanging on the line, we crashed and burned the entire service over poached eggs to order. We had to 86 all Benedict dishes fifteen minutes into service, much to the anger of the owner and partners, who, as usual for all Brunch services, were sitting with their entire families, from toddlers to Grandma, grumpily waiting for their orders. I later tagged this particular service "The Titanic Brunch" with my co workers in the kitchen. The next Saturday night, after service and before closing, I personally poached 150 perfectly cooked eggs and held them in batches of twenty in slightly salted ice water for Brunch service the next day. We never crashed and burned a brunch service again. My chef had to explain and justify this fiasco multiple times to the owners and partners and managers over the course of the next month but never explained how this well known technique was implemented and his attempts to rescue his reputation from that point on. Ah, the life of a sous chef as told through the genius of Mr Pepin.

love watchin this man work

I have a very old poaching pot. It makes up to 4 eggs...Very simple ..no waste...nice form and triangular shape.

For as many different videos I watched, I've seen that many variations on egg poaching technique. Some made less sense than others, most shared at least one or two aspects of procedure. After trying THIS technique, I ended up with the poached eggs I remembered from when I was a kid [ :-) ] . I really don't remember exactly when I was introduced to poached eggs. I DO remember the look on my Dad's face when I first ordered them at breakfast on a weekend visits with him. I was "heavy" as a kid, & up to 38 y.o., when I had GBS in 2005, & ended up 400 lbs smaller by 43. Before & during that time I got married, had a daughter, & found out that I didn't just like to eat (duh!). . . I was a "Foodie". Got my Assoc. in Rest./FS Mgmt. (FOH/BOH) in '08 after studying under a few authentic "Cordon Bleu-trained" French-born Chefs, who came as an Instructor's Exchange to teach alongside our Chefs at The Elgin Culinary Institute at E.C.C. (my Comm. College's culinary program). Between the GBS, my schooling, & a daughter who developed into a "Foodie" as well, I ended up learning a great deal about nutrition, technique, best practices, new cultures/cuisines, etc. and as such a perfectionist, I'm now a bigger "Foodie" than ever. Thank you for your help with this content.

You‘re an excellent teacher, Sir!

I always was told to swirl the water before you put the eggs in ! I will follow your advice chef 👩‍🍳 Thanks

"Just Poach your own egg" hehe, I like it.

always informative, never pompous or self ingraciating. even martin yan sometimes toots his own horn. the way jaque brings us to enlightenment is a smooth journey to new understanding. one where he's showing different varieties of truffle: priceless. "these are quite expensive, and these: well, a little bit more." never acts like an arrogant noodge- nice

This man is my hero.., really. He taught me a lot....

I'm impressed! Just discovered this and it's by far the best egg poaching tutorial out here!

this seems easy instruction. I'll try to cook it using these instructions

Lol all his guest are like. 🙄Your a pro chef and I got to cook my own food.

Sometimes I forget how versatile the egg actually is.

Brilliantly simple!

The main point is that the eggs need to be really fresh to have really thick, close whites. He comes close to saying this when he mentions that "eggs from your own hen would be much better and hold its shape" - from experience, I would say that supermarket-bought eggs need to have at least 14 days date left on them to be decent for poaching.

great work Jacques

Beautiful.

Perfection! Thanks for a great video and all the tips!

Julia Child ( Pepin's good friend ) par-cooked the eggs in the shell ( poke a hole in one end ), shocked them , then cracked that into the water to finish. Gives a beautiful egg with perfect shape. I've seen high volume kitchens use this trick for busy Sunday brunches. They'd keep 5 gallon buckets of par-cooked and shocked eggs on the line ( Done right before service, obviously ) and then just crack them into a Bennie steamer when they got an order. Any leftover eggs get recycled into gribiche, etc