Poached eggs feel like a real treat but getting them perfectly cooked can feel quite hard. They certainly feel trickier to cook at home than the fried, boiled or scrambled versions.

For this reason, many people don't cook poached eggs at home and only get to have them as a weekend treat while out for brunch at a cafe or restaurant. And this can make them feel extra-special.

Get a poached egg right and you will have a soft, pillow-like outer white which you cut open to reveal a rich and silky orange yolk oozing out over your toast. But get it wrong and you'll have a stringy, watery mess or an overcooked egg with a hard yellow yolk with a grey tinge.

And therein lies the problem with the poached egg: it can feel tricky to get it right. Many people will have tried the age-old method of creating a swirling, whirlpool-effect in the boiling water into which you drop your raw egg. But this only has limited effectiveness and can still be very messy.

However, there is a clever cooking method that will give you perfect poached eggs every time with no mess. And it still involves a simple pan of boiling water. All you need beyond that is a sieve (strainer).

How to cook perfect poached eggs using a sieve

This method really couldn't be simpler. All you need to do is bring your water to the boil in a pan as normal. Once boiling, lower in your sieve, then crack your egg into the sieve. You can also crack it into a small bowl, cup or glass first if that makes it easier to get into the sieve.

Cook it for three minutes, then lift the sieve out of the water, transfer your egg onto your plate and enjoy.

Explaining how well the method worked for her, Cherie Denham showed users on TikTok how simple it is. She said: "It works brilliantly. So normally I would have just simmered some water, dropped an egg in after making a whirlpool, waited three minutes and let the egg poach.

"But you know what, this way with a sieve is great because it means you can use older eggs as well. Normally, if you poach an older egg, all the white, the albumen, all goes through the water really, really messily and there's no substance to it. But if you put an older egg in a sieve, all of that watery white drops through and you're left with some substance to the egg.

"So, honestly, I think this is brilliant. Just trim off the bits, I put it on a piece of my sourdough this morning and it was absolutely delicious."