Cheese Soufflé - Preparing Ingredients, Oven and Pan

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How to Make a Cheese Soufflé

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Karen Stiegler

Culinary Instructor, Recipe Developer, Tester, www.pastrynomad.com

www.pastrynomad.com

pastrynomad@yahoo.com

Karen Stiegler is a culinary educator, recipe developer and recipe tester. Karen holds a Diplome de Patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and has been teaching American and French pastry and desserts in the U.S. and abroad for over 10 years. She is currently teaching for Williams-Sonoma, and offers group, private, and hands-on courses as well as professional pastry demonstrations in shops and restaurants, and also specializes in Healthy Baking. Karen also has extensive experience in catering of American desserts, cakes and candies. Karen spent three years in Paris researching and teaching French pastries and desserts to Americans abroad, founding her own pastry instruction program. Karen is also a professional cake decorator and instructor, and was Cake Decorating Instructor of the Year Worldwide Developmental Accounts in 2000 for Wilton Industries. Karen has a number of published recipes and also holds a Bachelors Degree in Journalism from Pepperdine University. She just completed work on a recipe and menu project for the newly opened Bazaar dining concept by Chef Jose Andres' of Jaleo, Washington, DC, including all restaurants in the new SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Karen served as a personal chef to the British Ambassador in Oslo, Norway, where she also worked on recipe development, testing and a cookbook. She has lived in France, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Africa and Asia, and traveled extensively throughout the world, sampling all types of cuisine. Karen is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and well as Women Chefs and Restaurateurs professional organizations. A recipe of Karen's is included in the James Beard Award Finalist Cookbook, "Cooking with Les Dames d'Escoffier". Karen speaks French, Spanish, Norwegian and German. She has also worked for the National Restaurant Association.

Cheese Soufflé - Preparing Ingredients, Oven and Pan

Karen Stiegler from PastryNomad.com shows you how to prepare the ingredients and pan for the cheese souffle.

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Tags:

Cheese

Souffle

French

Cooking

Baking

Seperate eggs

Beat egg whites

Cheese sauce

Souffle mold

Cheese Soufflé - Preparing Ingredients, Oven and Pan

Ingredients

4 Tablespoons butter, plus 1 Tablespoon extra butter, softened

2 to 3 Tablespoons grated Parmesan

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 ounces grated Gruyère or Emmenthal (Swiss) cheese

6 large eggs, separated

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Instructions

1. Place the rack in the bottom third of your oven. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Generously butter a 2-quart ceramic or glass soufflé dish and sprinkle with the 2 to 3 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese to coat the bottom and sides.

2. Place the 4 Tablespoons of butter in a 2- to 3-quart saucepan on medium heat to melt. Add the flour. Using a wooden spoon, stir and cook until the mixture is smooth and bubbling, one to two minutes. Stir in the milk, and salt, and continue stirring and cooking until it develops into a sauce which thickens and boils, about three to four minutes. Remove from the heat.

3. Add the 6 ounces grated cheese and stir until melted. Add the 6 egg yolks and stir until the mixture is blended and smooth. Set aside this cheese sauce.

4. Place the 6 egg whites in a very clean, grease free stainless steel bowl, and fit an electric mixer with the whisk attachment. Beat the whites on medium speed until foamy. Then add the cream of tartar, turn to high speed, and beat until short, stiff, moist peaks form. Don’t overbeat.

5. Pour about 1/3 of the cheese sauce into the whites on one side of the bowl, and using a flexible spatula, begin to gently fold the cheese sauce into the whites. Add the remaining sauce in two more steps, folding gently until just blended.

6. Pour or spoon the batter into the prepared soufflé dish. Do not fill the mold more than ¾ full. Draw a circle on the surface of the soufflé batter with a small cake spatula or the tip of a knife, about one inch in from the rim, to help an attractive crown form during baking.

7. Bake the souffle until the top is deep brown in color, and cracks, looking fairly dry, 25 to 30 minutes. Do not open the door during baking!

8. Serve immediately after removing from oven, scooping portions from soufflé with a large spoon. Garnish with fresh herbs or a tomato sauce.

Transcripts

Karen Stiegler: Hi I am Karen Stiegler and today I am showing you how to make a traditional cheese souffl. So first I want to talk to you about separating the eggs. I like to crack my eggs on the counter; I don't like to crack it on the side of a bowl because when you do that some of the eggs shell can go back up into the egg and then get into your egg whites. And then holding it over one of the bowls, I am going to allow the yolk to go in kind of one side of the shell and then just use my hand to go back and forth and let the egg whites sort of fall down. Now I am using these three bowls for a reason but I have my one egg white here in this bowl and I have my egg yolk in this bowl. I pour this egg white into my third bowl. Now it is very important that you do not get any of the egg yolk into the egg whites for this recipe because we want to beat the egg whites up and if any yolk gets into the egg white, then they will not beat up properly.

So now, I am going to put this into my main bowl with my egg whites. And the reason we do this is because if a bit of the egg yolk broke and got into this white, it will contaminate the whole amount of whites. So I want to you to go ahead and just continue to separate until you have all six eggs separated.

So now I am going to talk to you about preparing the oven. And I have here oven thermometer and you want to preheat your oven to 350 for this recipe. You will want to have the rack in the bottom third of the oven and I suggest using an oven thermometer like this because you can set the temperature of course on outside of your oven. But if you get one of these, it's an inexpensive way to really know exactly what is going on in your oven. Put it in your oven before you preheat it and then when you get ready to put your souffl in, and you will know if the oven is at the right temperature.

And now we are just going to prepare the mould. So I have my approximately two quart mold here out of glass or ceramic with straight sides. That's what you want because you want those souffl to be able to rise up. Now what we are going to do is, we have that little -- we have four table spoons of butter but we have that little extra here and I have just allowed it to come to room temperature and soften. You could use paper towel like I am, but you want to be really generous with it and just grease your whole mold and let me have our two-three table spoons of parmesan cheese. So I am going to dump this in there and then I want to just go around the mould and cover it with the parmesan cheese. So now we have our pan, this is totally coated with parmesan cheese. Next we will prepare the base for the souffl.