What’s Poaching in Cooking? Explained Simply

What is poaching?

Poaching is a “moist heat” cooking-method that cooks food just below the boiling temperature. It is a delicate way of cooking that will not damage your food. Simmering and boiling are the two other cooking “moist heat” methods.

Poaching is a gentle and forgiving cooking technique. It’s difficult to harm your vegetables or overcook them this way. You might have heard of poached eggs before. Here we will explore poaching plant-based food.

The advantages of poaching ✅

Poaching allows the food and liquid to exchange flavors through a process called osmosis. Osmosis moves molecules from a concentrated solution to a less concentrated one to achieve balance.

In cooking terms, this means you can infuse flavors into food by poaching it in a flavorful liquid.

That is exactly what happens when you cook pasta in salty water. The salty concentrated water breaks through the pasta's outer layer, creating osmosis with the unsalted pasta inside!

Poaching results in two reusable cooking elements:

• The liquid used, now containing some of the food's flavors.
• The food itself, infused with the liquid's flavors.

So, how can you use this to your advantage?

First, the process of osmosis helps balance flavors. Choose your liquid and add spices and herbs to infuse specific flavors into your food.

Second, use food to transfer flavors into the water, which you can then reuse (like making vegetable broths).

Lastly, soften strong-flavored food by poaching it in water.

I will explain how to use poaching effectively later in the article. First, let's see when not to use poaching.

The disadvantages of poaching? ❌

Now you understand that poaching uses osmosis to balance the concentrations between the liquid and the food. Therefore, there are a few scenarios where poaching is not recommended.

When you cook using water:

• Some minerals and vitamins dissolve in the water.
• The food’s flavor can diminish.

Therefore, avoid poaching if you plan to discard the liquid or wish to preserve the food’s original flavor. It would be better then to use a dry-heat cooking method. 😉

The different poaching techniques?

There are several poaching techniques. The most common is deep poaching, where the food is fully submerged in water, unlike shallow poaching, where only half is submerged.

Another method is sous-vide poaching, where food is sealed in a bag before being submerged. This preserves all flavors, vitamins, and minerals without any exchange with the water. (thus losing the interest of poaching)

Each poaching technique has his own benefits:‍

• Deep poaching provokes strong flavor exchanges between the poaching liquid and the food.
• ‍Shallow poaching creates more subtle exchanges but preserves more of the food’s original flavors.
• ‍Sous-vide poaching locks in all the flavors, vitamins, and minerals, no exchanges happen.

What ingredients to use for poach?

You can poach almost any ingredients, the most common one is eggs, but I recommend you to try on vegetables and fruits! Next time you cook some vegetables in water or blanch them, switch to a vegetable broth and add some spices.

I recommend poaching vegetables using the deep poaching technique.

If you're looking to try a recipe, I've created this poached leek starter. I love cooking it to complete a main course with some extra veggies.

Poaching fruits

This might surprise you, but fruits can be poached too! They use the same osmosis reaction as vegetables.

Add syrup, sugar, and spices such as anise or vanilla to your liquid and poach fruits like apples and pears. 🍐

The liquid turns flavorful and can be reduced to a sauce that adds a rich twist to the fruit's taste!