Quiche Tips

I was asked to bring a quiche to a birthday brunch recently.

I love quiche but the last time I made it,

 it turned out a bit watery so this time I wanted to avoid that if I could.

I did a bit of research online and decided to share what I learned with you.

1. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes before baking. Once your crust is rolled out and placed in the pan. Put it in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. (Use a metal pan or a tempered glass one that can go from freezer to oven without breaking.) While the crust is in the freezer, you can prepare the ingredients for your filling.

2. Blind bake the crust. Blind Baking means baking it before filling it. Carefully line the unbaked crust with parchment paper and then fill with beans or pie weights, making sure the weights go to the edges. This ensures that crust edges will not slide down into the middle as it bakes.  

Bake the crust at 350º for about 20 minutes with the weights in it, then remove the parchment paper and weights and continue to bake until the crust begins to turn colour.  Remove from oven and fill.

                          

3. Make sure all your filling ingredients are fairly dry.  This means frying mushrooms until the liquid evaporates, wilting spinach and blotting it with paper towel to get the excess moisture out, and pre frying bacon, sausage or proscuitto. For the quiche in the pictures, I used sauteed onions, red peppers, spinach and proscuitto.

4. When filling the quiche, start with a a layer of the grated cheese of your choice. Sprinkle the vegetables over that and then top with the remaining cheese. (I used 1/3 Cheddar and 2/3 Swiss)

A rule of thumb here is to use about 1 1/2- 2 cups cheese for a 10" pie plate.

5. Eggs to milk ratio. I found that using 2 large eggs to 1 cup of milk works well.  For a 10" pie plate I used 4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups milk and 1/2 cup heavy cream.  I also like to add a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire sauce to give it an extra punch of flavour.

6. Bake the quiche at 350º for about 35-40 minutes.  Don't over bake it.  It should still be a tiny bit wobbly in the middle and a knife tip inserted into the middle should be clean with just a bit of moisture.

Let the baked quiche sit for about 10-15 minutes before slicing and serving to give it time to set.

 

I found these tips helped a lot and I had a nice silky filling with no watery residue.

Quiche remains a brunch favourite and I hope that keeping these tips in mind will improve your quiche skills.

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