This $7 Tool Is Essential for Poached Eggs

When it comes to poaching eggs for toast, salads, grain bowls, or Eggs Benedict, how do professionals get them to look so perfect? Mine tend to have rough edges with trailing tendrils of egg whites. Surprisingly, it doesn’t require a special egg-cooking gadget; all that’s needed is a simple tool that you likely already have in your kitchen.

Food & Wine’s Culinary Director, Justin Chapple, revealed a clever poaching egg hack a few years back on YouTube, and it was more recently employed on season 2 of The Bear. All it takes is a fine mesh strainer, like this $7 one from Winco. 

Winco Stainless Steel Fine Mesh Strainer

While most cooks use a strainer for draining liquids off pasta, rinsing fruit, or sifting flour, this tool has another use: making perfect poached eggs and scrambled eggs. Putting eggs in a fine mesh strainer removes the watery part of the egg white, which is the culprit behind “shaggy, ugly-looking” poached eggs, Chapple says. This watery bit can make your scrambled eggs have a rubbery texture, too. But for poached eggs, once you’ve strained out the excess egg white, simply lower the sieve with the remaining whites and yolk into your pot, let it simmer, and a few minutes later, you’ll have the perfect consistency.

Made of rust-resistant stainless steel with a flat wood handle, this 8-inch strainer is large enough to sift and rinse, but the mesh can still remove “the smallest of particles” from whatever you’re straining, according to one shopper. Plus, it has a reinforced rim with a metal loop, so you can rest it on a mixing bowl or hang it to keep within reach, and cleanup is a breeze since the strainer is dishwasher-safe.

This strainer has more than 5,700 five-star ratings from shoppers who have used it to make turkey broth, macarons, cocktails, pasta, and, of course, “PERFECT poached eggs.” The wood handle “feels sturdy to hold,” and “the little feet at the end are a bit curved, so I feel like it sits on a pot more securely than others I’ve had,” said one reviewer. “Nothing gets through it except liquid,” another shopper noted about the “very fine” mesh material. And, while some lower-priced strainers tend to rust, shoppers report they’ve had “no issues with rust” after “a ton of uses.”

Next time you make brunch, you’ll be glad you have this handy Winco fine mesh strainer. It’s just $7 to produce restaurant-worthy poached or scrambled eggs.

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At the time of publishing, the price was $7.