Thanks to a French chef, Nigella says she's finally cracked the secret to poaching eggs. Photo / Getty Images
She may be known worldwide as a domestic goddess, but there is one simple meal that has eluded Nigella Lawson until now: the poached egg.
But Lawson, who has sold 12 million cook books, said she has finally learned to create the perfect poached egg after taking advice from a French chef.
"One of the things I was convinced I could never do was poached egg and I had such a fear of egg poaching out of proportion to the task," she told the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
"I have cracked it now. I crack the egg in a tea strainer over a cup and all the very watery bits go underneath. I have to say I don't do this every morning when I have my breakfast.
"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 sometimes encourage the white to come up in shape."
She also said she had heard of restaurants that use scissors to cut off the straggly bits of cooked egg white before serving to customers.
Discussing her flaws in the kitchen, she added: "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.
"I'm filming for my new series and I saw the filming of my chopping and I've almost got time for a cup of tea between slicing the carrots. I was so embarrassed watching."
On the comforts of home cooked food, she pledged she would never again suffer through an overly fancy dinner, adding: "I am actually not even interested in trying it now.
"When you have eaten more meals that you are going to, you feel you really don't want to be wasting it. I will never again, even out of politeness, eat something with foam ever again."
Asked to predict the next big trend in food, she settled for Filipino-influenced dishes and speculated pandan, a plant used in southern Asian cooking, could be a favourite ingredient of the future. Her new book, At My Table, is out now.
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