Best Technique for Classic Flan - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph

hey everyone thomas joseph here and today we are tackling flan now is this a dessert that you avoid making at home because of the long laundry list of things that could go wrong while tamanna share with you all of the tricks and tips you need for flan success let's get started [Music] before we start the custard that wonderful rich custard that we love I'm gonna make the caramel for the flan now flan as opposed to creme brulee has a wonderful thin layer of caramel that goes in the bottom of our baking pan here which will inevitably become the top of the flan so to start this off I have 1/2 a cup of granulated sugar regular granulated sugar I'm gonna use a nice wide saucepan here and to this I'm gonna add a few tablespoons of water this is 3 tablespoons of water but basically what we're doing here guys is creating what we call a wet caramel and wet caramels are fantastic it's actually my preferred way of making caramels in general whether it's for a flan like this a caramel sauce or anything else you might use a caramel for because it really helps to prevent crystallization from forming if you're going to make a dry caramel which is just sugar no water what could happen is the sugar starts to melt and to caramelize unevenly which creates these crystal chains and ultimately your entire pot will become crystallized and you'll have to start the process over again or there's actually a way to fix it so if that happens to you go on Martha Stewart comm and check out the video that we have made a really great easy way to make caramel and to prevent this crystallization from forming is to actually use the lid of the pot so in the initial stage of the caramel while it's a simple sugar syrup like it is now placing the lid on top is going to encourage steam steam is gonna collect on the top of the lid and that condensation that drip down of liquid is going to actually brush away any crystals that might form on the perimeter of the pan every once in a while you can remove the lid make sure that the sugar is melting nice and evenly always swirl your pot never stir it with a spoon or a spatula at the beginning stage here because what that will do again it will form crystals on your utensil and when you reintroduce it into the caramel it'll start off that chain reaction so swirl lid and this will take anywhere from five to ten minutes to create a really wonderful dark caramel that's what we're looking for something that's really nice and dark because that color is gonna give us a fantastic flavor in the end so it's been a few minutes I'd say about three and at this point I'm going to remove the lid because the caramel is starting to turn colors so at this point there's a little bit of amber I'm gonna swirl the pan so that we get caramelization it's nice and even and it smells nice and nutty you want to make sure that you're really cooking the caramel to a nice dark rich color alright guys so we're almost there now the recipe we always say cook the caramel to an amber color and one of the things since we're working in a dark pot here you want to kind of go a little bit further than you think this is actually a really great tip when making caramel you almost want it to be a dark amber something like a really dark rich maple syrup color which we're getting right now and you're almost gonna smell a little bit of bitterness and that's really what you want so this is good I'm gonna turn the heat off and I'm gonna pour this immediately into my 9 by 2 inch round baking pan now take the time here and be very careful but while the caramel is hot you want to swirl this around the pan try to cover as much of the pan as you possibly can but this is a thin coating of caramel so it might not completely cover the pan but as best you can and then set this off to the side to cool now be careful because once you pour the caramel into this pan it's gonna heat the pan up so make sure you don't burn your fingers while our caramel cools we're gonna start the custard base now I have 4 cups of whole milk here and I'm gonna put that in a large sauce pot now when you're making a flan the main difference in terms of the custard that you're making as opposed to like a creme brulee is that it's not as rich and it has a substantial amount of whole eggs or egg white in the custard base so that you can turn the custard out of the pan and it will hold up nicely it will have more structure so kind of lower fat dairy and more eggs or whole eggs so four cups of whole milk and a half a cup of granulated sugar I'm gonna turn this on a medium heat and really what we're doing here we want to dissolve some of the sugar that we've added into this pot and we want to bring this milk up to a temperature of around maybe 160 degrees 180 degrees you want to scold the milk and what this does is it helps to denature the proteins in the milk and that will give you a really silken texture in the end the one thing you do not want to do is boil this that is an important tip there guys because if you boil it you have the risk of actually taking all of those proteins and kind of strangling them in a way and they become broken and that will give you a grainy texture so really we're just gonna heat this up and then we're gonna temper it into our egg mixture now while this is heating I'm gonna mix together my egg so I have in this bowl four eggs I need five whole eggs for this recipe and I also need five egg yolks to this I'm going to add a little bit more sugar so another half cup of sugar so in total you guys we're using a cup of sugar in the custard mixture itself I'm gonna whisk this together and a pinch of salt it's really important whenever you're baking to add a little bit of salt and it helps to bring out all of the wonderful flavors now today I'm gonna be using vanilla and my custard and I'll add that in a little bit but if you wanted to make a flan maybe a coffee flan or some other flavored flan maybe you wanted to infuse some spice into this you could certainly do that and the best way I think to do it is to infuse it in your milk mixture here at this point my milk is heating up my eggs are whisked together and once this comes to temperature will begin the tempering process so now we're going to start the tempering process and tempering is very simple don't get intimidated by this process guys all you're gonna do is you're gonna take a little bit of the hot liquid the hot mixture that we have here and you're gonna gently stream it into your eggs now you don't want to do this in the opposite way otherwise you're gonna end up with scrambled eggs so add the hot ingredients into your eggs while you're whisking constantly and this will bring all of the eggs up to temperature without scrambling them alright so this looks good and at this point once you have a good portion of the milk mixture included and the eggs you can stream in the rest all right so that was super simple that's your custard base now I'm gonna add as I said before a little bit of vanilla and that's my flavoring so anywhere from a quarter to a half to even a teaspoon of vanilla extract is really great here so whisk this together and now we're ready to fill our caramel lined baking dish the custard is ready and now I'm gonna pour this right into my lined cake pan here now if you wanted to you could certainly strain your custard mixture it will fish out any little bits of egg white maybe that haven't been dissolved in your custard but I think this is totally fine and I'm gonna pour it right in and make sure your oven is preheated to 325 degrees with the rack in the center of the oven and what you want to do is you want to fill a roasting pan with about two inches of water and leave that in there for about 30 minutes so it heats up and we're gonna cook this flan in a gentle water bath and what that does is it helps the temperature of the custard to kind of increase so that the mixture will set but it does it over a long period of time now this flan will take any from 50 minutes to 60 minutes maybe even a little bit longer until there's a slight jiggle in the center all right now the flan has been in the oven for 50 minutes and I wanted to show you this guys this is when you know to pull the flan out of the oven when there's a slight jiggle in the very center of the custard that's when you know it's done don't be worried that it's not set because custards as they cool will start to firm up so at this point I'm gonna remove the flan from the water bath and I'm gonna cool this on a wire rack until it is completely room temperature and then after it reaches room temperature we're gonna put it into the refrigerator until it's nice and cold and firm and then we'll be ready to serve it so it's a really great idea to make this a day in advance if you're having a dinner party do this the night before and then it will be just perfect the night off so we have a nice chilled flow on here and the trick to getting it out of the pan is that you have to loosen it from the edge so I like to use a flexible knife something that bends easily and what you're gonna do is you're gonna take the knife and you're gonna glide it around the outside of the flan you want to apply a generous amount of pressure against the side of the pan so that you don't get any unsightly marks and you can already see I don't know if you guys saw that but this flan is gonna come out nicely it's actually spinning in the pan and that's great now I'm using a cake stand today you want to make sure that you're using a dish that's I'd say about an inch or two wider than the cake pan that we're using today and also something that has a lip because this has a lot of caramel right and the caramel is gonna come down the side so be sure to have something that does have a lip to it so here we go we're gonna flip the cake stand over on top of the cake pan and then you're gonna pick both of them up and give it a flip but be quick and you should be able to hear it and I see some caramel so I feel like we have some success here there might be a little bit of suction so there you go it looks absolutely amazing now I want to show you what this looks like on the inside so I'm gonna cut a beautiful wedge now this recipe is one of my favorites because it's firm but the flan itself has a nice texture to it and I still can texture so I'm gonna just maneuver this to my plate look at that how beautiful silky now this is really fantastic you guys and I would encourage you to make this at home for your next special occasion and as always if you have any kitchen conundrums whether they're baking or cooking reach out to us using the hashtag kitchen conundrums we love to hear from you mmm oh my god this is so delicious I eat the whole thing amazing [Music] you

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Keywords: Best Technique for Classic Flan, Classic Flan, Flan, Best flan recipe, when to flip flan, flan with condensed milk and whole milk, how to make classic flan, how to make flan, classic flan, recipes, how to make, how to bake, how to cook, cooking, caramel for flan, desserts, tart, custard, custard tart, desserts and tarts, how to make custard, how to make easy flan, Thomas Joseph, Everyday Food, Sarah Carey, Kitchen Conundrums

Id: HdufWM8P2rU

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020