Hey guys, so with all the
Spring holidays approaching, I thought it was time that we tackle one of my favorite party foods, Quiche. Quiche is one of those things that you really want to have a foolproof recipe at your disposal because when it goes wrong,
it can really go wrong and we have all seen those effects. The crumbly crust, the fillings that have no structure and turn into a bit of a wobbly mess, the add-ons that are sort of half cooked. Yeah, we've all seen it. It's not pretty, but not to worry because I am going to arm
you with a fantastic recipe that'll have you making
a great tasting quiche every single time. The best part is, it can
all be made the day before, my kind of meal. Before we begin, tip number one has to do with choosing the right pan. I'm a big fan of these
removable bottom tart pans because you can make a quiche or a tart and then when it's fully
baked, all you have to do is remove the ring and you are left with a
beautiful presentation. If you want to know where
to get one of these pans, I put a link in the description
for where you can get one for just under $20. If you don't have a tart pan or you don't have a food
processor, that's okay. Here's how you can make
another great looking quiche. Go and buy one of those
store-bought pie crusts, typically the ones that are
deep dish will work the best. Here's a little cheat that I learned when I worked in a bakery when I was 16, it was my first job, and my job was pie duty. One of the things that
they taught me how to do, which is a great little cheat, is to take the store bought pie crust, crimp it all around the
edges so that you're creating sort of a nice, flat surface then go in and start pinching the side, just creating nice little triangles all around the edges. When you're done, it'll
look like you actually rolled out that dough
and formed it yourself. It really looks great
with this recipe, as well. The first thing we're going to do to make our homemade crust,
is we're going to take a cup and a quarter of flour, add it to our food processor with a teaspoon of salt. Give that a light pulse. Then you're gonna add
one half cup of butter and you want to make sure that that butter is in little cubes. Go ahead and just add it as
you're pulsing the machine. You'll know when it's done
when the flour resembles a coarse meal. Here is my second tip when
it comes to preventing those crumbly crusts. You really want to make
sure that you put some egg in your dough because the egg is really gonna help the flour and the butter bind together and prevent your crust from
turning into a crumbly mess. So I'm a big fan of adding egg and water to pie crust dough. You're gonna give your
egg a nice light whisk, you're gonna add that egg
mixture to your flour mixture just pulsing all the while until a nice dough
develops, and you can stop. This point, I know we're
supposed to take that dough, wrap it up, put it in
the fridge for 30 minutes but I have found that I cheat a little bit and it always tends to work for me so I'm going to share with
you my little technique. I know this is very unconventional and there could be pastry chefs out there that are rolling your eyes at me. I know, but this is what I do. I take the dough, I roll
it out really quickly, just reminding myself that I know I'm not supposed to do this but I'm doing it anyway. Seems to sort of help move things along. Then I take the dough,
I plop it into my tin, work it in all around the sides making sure that it's nice and fit and then I do what I
call little fist bumps. I take my fist and I go all along the side just making sure that the sides
of the pan are all fitted. Sometimes when you do that,
the dough will rise up to the tart pan, that's
okay, that's what you want because we're gonna take
a little paring knife and we're going to trim all
along the side of the dough. What we're gonna do now is
we're gonna take our tin and we're gonna pop it in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. That's okay, we have other things to do while our dough is getting nice and hard. This stage, we're gonna
work on our filling. You're gonna take out a large saute pan. To that, you're gonna add
a tablespoon of butter. Once it's nice and melted, you're gonna add a half a
cup of diced white onion. Then you're gonna season, just to taste, with some salt and pepper. Then once it's nice and sauteed and those onions are translucent, you can go ahead and add the spinach. If you have never cooked
with spinach before, not to worry. It looks like a ton of spinach, and I'm using six ounces here, but this is going to
cook down to about a cup. Just keep your eye on
it and give it a saute till it's nice and wilted. Once it reaches that
stage, you can go ahead and turn off your flame
and let the filling cool. Meanwhile, we are going
to work on our egg batter. In a large bowl, you're
going to add 10 eggs, give those a good whisk, then we are going to add
a cup of heavy cream. This is my other tip for you if you wanna get a foolproof quiche. Quiche, at the end of the day, is not diet food, unfortunately. It tastes too good to be diet food. It's really party food and if you want to make a
fantastic tasting quiche, you've gotta go with the full cream. A lot of you know this
as double-pouring cream. In France, when I buy it,
it's called creme liquide, so, really, it's just
a heavy, pourable cream that you can use to
really give your quiche a lot of structure. If you end up using milk or half and half, your quiche is probably not gonna have that kind of structure,
it'll be kind of wobbly because you really need that full fat to give it that structure. So, word to the wise, use the heavy cream. Whisk that together and then we're gonna add our seasonings. We're going to add a teaspoon of salt, some freshly cracked pepper and an eighth of a
teaspoon of cayenne pepper. I love a little kick in a quiche in the form of some cayenne pepper but if you're not a fan of spice, you could either leave it out or another traditional thing
to do to add to a quiche is some nutmeg, so you could add an eighth of
a teaspoon of ground nutmeg. Give that a whisk and there you have it, your egg mixture is done. This is a great recipe
that you could really put any filling into this. I like the spinach and the onion because I think it's really great for Spring time but you could use cheese and ham, you could use mushroom, ratatouille, really any filling you like
you can add to this batter so really get creative,
the choice is up to you. At this point, our
spinach and onion mixture is probably cooled so you can go ahead and just pour it out onto a cutting board. You'll want to give that
spinach a nice, rough chop. Go ahead and place it into your bowl, give it a whisk and then we are going to add a half a cup of grated Gruyere cheese. It's really the best kind of cheese to use for a quiche like this. So, now, here is another tip for you. A lot of times, quiche
recipes will call for blind baking the crust ahead of time, which essentially just
means taking your crust, putting some parchment
paper down with some beans and baking the crust. I have found that this is
where you can really trip up because a lot of times, that
crust will not hold its shape. It'll start to sort of sink down and then you end up with
a sort of misshapen crust. Yeah, I hate the blind baking, I am really not a fan of it. I think it does more damage
than good, in my opinion. What I do, and this is why we froze it, we wanted to make sure that that crust was nice and hard when it hits a hot oven, we are just gonna go
ahead and work quickly and we are gonna pour our
batter right into our crust and we are gonna pop
it in a 350 degree oven for about 45 to 50 minutes. You want to keep your eye on it. You want to make sure that the crust and that the quiche, is
nice and golden brown but that the quiche is not wobbly. If it starts to wiggle or jiggle, your quiche is not done and it probably needs
another five to ten minutes. If your quiche is
getting too brown on top, you can just go ahead and cover it with some aluminum foil and that way, the quiche will cook inside but your crust and your quiche
will not burn on the outside. When your quiche is done, you can go ahead and pull it out of the
oven and let it cool. If you're serving it right away, you can go ahead and just slice it in half and then slice it into
quarters or eighths. I also love to serve this dish with a beautiful tossed salad and if you missed last week's recipes, you can actually click
on the annotation here and you will see some of my favorite salad dressing recipes that would be perfect for this quiche. If you wanted to make this
ahead of time for a party, that is a great thing to do. In fact, this is what
I'm going to be doing for Easter this year. You can go ahead and make your quiches, let them cool completely, then wrap them in aluminum foil, pop it in the fridge overnight and then when you want to serve them, go ahead and put them
in a 300 degree oven, still covered, for at least 20 minutes. Then remove the foil
and allow them to bake without the foil for about five minutes. You'll see, all you have
to do the day of the party is toss your salad and warm up your quiche and you're good to go. I love this recipe because
quiche is such an elegant thing to serve at a party. It's great lap food, too,
so you can slice a piece, if you've got a big crowd people can kind of eat it on their laps. They're having something
elegant that isn't too messy. People will be so blown away when they heard that you made your own quiche, crust and all. I hope you guys give this one a try and let me know whatcha think and I will see you back here next week when we're gonna have a
really fun collaboration all around Easter dessert so
you won't wanna miss that. I'll see you then. Bye. (upbeat bluesy music)
