I
surprised myself the other night by whipping up a cheese soufflé
for dinner. It was delicious and very fancy looking, but was
surprisingly easy to make. I had always thought of soufflé as a
challenging and temperamental dish, but I'm here to tell you, they
are quite simple and taste much more savory than even the
ingredient list would lead you to believe. I looked up several
recipes and settled on this one:
Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network.
-
Butter, room temperature, for greasing the souffle
-
2 tablespoons grated
Parmesan
-
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) butter
-
3 tablespoons flour
-
1 teaspoon dry mustard
-
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
-
1/8 teaspoon
kosher salt
-
1 1/3 cups milk, hot
-
4 large egg yolks (2 1/2 ounces by weight)
-
6 ounces sharp
Cheddar
-
5 egg whites plus 1 tablespoon water (5 1/2 ounces by weight plus
1/2 ounce water)
-
1/2 teaspoon
cream of tartar
The
main thing to remember in this dish, as well as in much of French
cooking is technique. Set the eggs out and let them warm to room
temerature. Melt the butter in a sauce pan, don't brown it. Add the
flour and stir, forming a roux. Stir until the roux is completely
smooth-no lumps. Add the milk. This will make the mixture lumpy
again. Stir until there are no lumps at all and the mixture is
completely smooth. Add the spices (I skipped the cream of tartar
simply because I didn't have any on hand) and the cheese (I
substituted Fontina for cheddar, because that is what I had on
hand) and again your mixture will be lumpy. Again stir it until it
is completely smooth. Remove from the heat and let it come to room
temperature. Then add the egg yolks-making the mixture lumpy. Then,
you guessed it, stir until it is smooth.
Set
the mixture aside and whip your egg
whites in an electric mixer until they form stiff peaks. Add
1/3 of the egg whites to the cheesy mixture and fold in. This will
lighten the mixture so that you are able to fold in the rest of the
egg whites and keep some of their volume. Add the rest of the egg
whites and carefully fold in. Don't over mix. It's ok if you can
still see some streaks of egg white in the mixture. Transfer the
mixture to a buttered ceramic soufflé pan (or deep
cera
mic
mixing bowl as I did). Bake at 375 for 35 min and serve IMMEDATELY
(it will start to deflate a bit after just a few moments out of the
oven).
The
result is delicious and quite impressive looking.