Avocado toast with a poached egg: the café breakfast in 15 minutes
A thick slice of sourdough, avocado mashed with a fork with lemon, salt and chilli flakes, and a poached egg with a runny yolk on top. The breakfast a café charges dinner prices for, made at home in a quarter of an hour. The secret of a poached egg is three things: a fresh egg, water that barely trembles, and a spoon of vinegar.
Your own work in that: 15 min.
- Avocado and toast 5 min
- Poached eggs 7 min
- Assembling 3 min
Step by step
0 / 5 doneMash the avocado
Halve the avocado, remove the stone, scoop the flesh into a small bowl. Add the lemon juice, salt and chilli flakes and mash with a fork into a chunky paste, not a smooth purée. Put the water on for the eggs.
Ingredients: 2 pcs sourdough bread · 1 pcs avocado · ½ pcs lemon, juice · ¼ tsp salt · ¼ tsp chilli flakes · ¼ bunch chives · ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
TipLemon straight away: without acid, avocado darkens quickly. A ripe avocado yields to the thumb near the stalk, and the stalk comes off easily to show green underneath.
Fork, lemon, salt, chilli, chunkyToast the bread
Toast the slices in a toaster, on a dry pan or under the grill (about 2 minutes a side) until golden and crisp outside, soft inside. A thick slice of sourdough carries the weight of avocado and egg; thin toast goes soggy.
Golden outside, soft insideMake a whirlpool and slide in the egg
Bring the water with the vinegar to the boil in a pot and lower the heat until the water barely trembles, no bubbles. Crack an egg into a cup. Stir the water into a whirlpool with a spoon and slide the egg into its centre, close to the surface. The whirlpool wraps the white around the yolk; the vinegar helps the white set before it spreads.
Ingredients: 2 pcs eggs · 1 tbsp vinegar · 1500 ml water
TipA fresh egg has a thick white that clings to the yolk. An old one dissolves into wisps: that's the egg, not you. With an older egg, pour it through a sieve first to drain off the thin white.
Trembling water, a whirlpool, an egg from a cupCook 3 minutes
Cook 3 minutes without stirring: white set, yolk runny. Lift out with a slotted spoon onto paper towel, trim any wisps. Repeat with the second egg (or do both at once, without the whirlpool, slid in from opposite sides of the pot).
Three minutes: compact white, runny yolkAssemble and serve
Spread the avocado thickly on the hot toast, set the egg on top. Sprinkle with chives, pepper and a pinch of chilli flakes, a little salt on the egg. Eat at once, cutting the yolk so it runs into the avocado.
Avocado, egg, chives, cut the yolk
Before you start
Fried instead of poached
In butter over medium heat, 3 minutes under a lid: white set, yolk runny. Less finesse, the same result on the plate.
With feta or radish
Crumbled feta and radish slices on the avocado before the egg: a salty, crunchy contrast.
Poached eggs ahead
Drop cooked eggs into a bowl of cold water; they keep 2 days in the fridge. Reheat a minute in hot, not boiling, water before serving.
