Poaching had always struck me as the method you fall back on when you don’t trust yourself with direct heat.

Then one afternoon in the Adelaide Hills, lifting a bearded rock cod out of a cider and shallot poach, changed my mind. The fish was opaque to the edge, barely set at the centre and carrying the faintest echo of apple.

It wasn’t a compromise.

It was deliberate.

Poaching isn’t a retreat from technique. It’s a different kind of attention — instead of the quick decisions of a hot pan, you’re learning to hold something steady and trust the process.

Temperature Is the Technique

Poaching puts the fish into a seasoned liquid — water, aromatic broth, wine-based court bouillon, cider, milk or cream. The liquid does two jobs: it transfers heat gently, and it allows flavour to move between the fish and the cooking liquid. The important difference between poaching and boiling is temperature.

I generally work around 70–80°C for poaching. The liquid should be hot, with gentle movement, but not vigorously bubbling. On induction, I can hold 75°C quite accurately — if I see the liquid starting to bubble aggressively, I know the heat has gone too far.

I use a thermometer to check the fish in the thickest part rather than relying on a cooking time. Depending on the species and the result I’m after, I’ll often remove the fish around 48–52°C and allow carry-over cooking to finish it.

The important thing is not the number on the clock.

It’s holding the cooking environment steady.

Court Bouillon

Court bouillon is simply a seasoned poaching liquid — water, white wine or a little vinegar, onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, peppercorns and herbs give you a starting point. I’ll gently cook the aromatics first, then let the liquid settle into the poaching range before adding the fish.

The interesting part comes afterwards. The liquid has absorbed flavour from the seafood — reduce it, add butter, cream or fresh herbs and you can build a sauce that tastes of the fish you have just cooked. The cooking liquid becomes part of the dish rather than something that gets thrown away.

The Cider Version

The poaching liquid I return to most often is a dry Adelaide Hills apple cider with shallots. For a piece of fish, I don’t necessarily need to submerge it completely — I generally bring the liquid around two-thirds to three-quarters of the way up the fish and use a cartouche, a circle of baking paper sitting directly on the surface. It helps keep the top of the fish moist while allowing the liquid to reduce gently.

For me, this is where poaching becomes interesting. I’m not just cooking fish in liquid — I’m building a cooking environment around it. I’ve used the same approach with bearded rock cod and Goolwa pipis, reducing the cider and finishing it with cream, with the pipis cooked separately in the same liquid and added at the end. The structure stays the same even when the ingredients change.

Other Liquids

The beauty of poaching is that the liquid becomes part of the flavour. A Thai-style broth with lemongrass, galangal, ginger, lime and fish sauce works beautifully with barramundi, coral trout or snapper. Milk or cream gives delicate fish such as flathead a particularly gentle cook, and the fish-infused liquid can become the beginning of a sauce, chowder or pie.

And sometimes the best liquid is simply salted water. If I’ve bought exceptional fish, I don’t always want to surround it with a complicated sauce.

Choosing the Fish

Poaching suits fish with enough structure to hold together in liquid — pink ling, flathead, nannygai, coral trout, snapper, bearded rock cod and other firmer fish work particularly well. Medium-textured fish such as barramundi can also be excellent, but I handle them more carefully when removing them from the liquid. Very delicate fish can be better suited to steaming, where the flesh isn’t sitting directly in the liquid — that’s where the texture groups I use across the Seafood Techniques section become useful.

The species matters. But the structure of the fish matters just as much.

Reading the Finish

I don’t cook poached fish to a time. I look at the fish and, where appropriate, check the thickest part with a thermometer. Around 48–50°C, the flesh is silky and barely set. At 52–55°C, it becomes more traditionally cooked through — opaque but still tender. Push it towards 58–60°C and the flesh becomes noticeably firmer.

None of those results is necessarily wrong. They’re simply different textures. For me, the lower temperatures are where poaching becomes particularly interesting because they give you something that direct heat makes much harder to achieve.

Why It Works

Pan-searing creates flavour through browning, caramelisation and direct heat. Poaching does something else — it reveals what is already in the seafood and allows the cooking liquid to become part of the flavour. That’s why quality matters so much: there is no crust, smoke or char to hide behind. The fish has to stand on its own.

What I’ve learnt is that poaching isn’t the technique I reach for when I don’t trust myself with heat. It’s the technique I reach for when I want to control the heat very carefully.

Hold the liquid steady.

Choose the right fish.

Watch the temperature.

Then leave it alone.

That’s the gentle precision of poaching.