How To Make Cheese Souffle
This film will show you how to make cheese soufflé. Visit foodwishes.com for the full story, recipe ingredients and more details. Enjoy!
Step 1: Introduction
Today we're doing cheese souffle. It is not as hard as it looks. I know there's an accent on the e, but don't let that scare you, this is not a hard recipe.
Step 2: Cheese
It starts with our basic bechamel sauce, we've made that before. That's on this site. You're going to make a batch of bechamel. That's only half a batch--that's a two-cup batch there.
And to my hot bechamel--I turned off the heat--I'm going to add four ounces by weight of grated Gruyere cheese, which is a really, really beautiful Swiss cheese. You can use a Cheddar, any cheese like that will work. Monterey Jack, if you want something a little mild.
That's a quarter cup of Parmesan and, I think, a quarter teaspoon of dry mustard. So into this hot bechamel you're going to stir in your cheese and about five minutes later you're going to have a cheesy bechamel. There's some culinary term for this, I think it's a Mornay sauce. I call it cheesy bechamel.
Step 3: Preheat Oven
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. We're going to use a nice hot oven.
Step 4: Cheese Souffles
Now, I'm going to make individual cheese souffles, so I'm going to butter a ramekin. Just some soft butter, but make sure it's all covered. Now some people use bread crumbs for this, but I'm going to use some finely grated extra Parmesan and I'm just going to tap it around the inside so the inside is basically coated with butter and Parmesan. So do that to all of your ramekins.
In this cheese souffle recipe, I'm going to make six souffles with this size batch. Now here we go. Very simple. I keep saying that, but it is. Souffles are not hard.
Step 5: Bechamel Sauce
So take one cup of that cheesy bechamel mixture. You're going to separate four eggs--make sure there's no yolk in the egg white. There can be a little white in the egg yolk, but no egg yolk in the egg white. I want you to stir into your one cup of bechamel with cheese sauce your four egg yolks. Now that sauce again was just slightly warm, it was not still hot. Cold won't work, hot won't work--just warm or room temperature is fine.
You're going to whisk up your egg whites until they just become a beautiful meringue. If you use copper bowl you get just a little more volume. A regular bowl works, but just make sure you whip it up. You don't want it too stiff. You want it to what we call a stiff peak where the meringue will kind of hold on the end of the whisk. But if you overwhip it, it will actually start to separate and get chunky. And that doesn't make for a good souffle.
Step 6: Making The Souffles
Take one-third of your egg white mixture, which is just a foam. You're going to take one-third of your egg white foam and you're going to stir it into your cheesy bechamel. Remember-- it's slightly warm. This first third basically just lightens the mixture up for the rest of the egg whites.
So then you're going to take the rest of the egg whites and you're going to use the age-old folding method. Now, folding means you take the spatula and you go into the center and just turn and pull the batter up over the top. And you just kind of do what I'm doing there. Why am I explaining it? You're watching it. So fold in the egg whites, and just mix them in. I'm not telling you to overmix them, but just fold them in until the egg white kind of disappears--you might see tiny streaks of egg white. That's OK. But you don't want to be so paranoid that you just are a nervous wreck. So now you have this beautiful, light, airy, cheesy mixture.
You're now going to spoon it carefully into your ramekins. Now don't go all the way to the top; make sure you leave about a half-inch from the top. Again, this recipe made six cheese souffles. I'm going to take a little bit of Parmesan and just dust the tops of the cheese souffles because it will look cool when it bakes.
Step 7: Cook
Now put the cheese souffles in the oven for about 12-15 minutes. That's just a guide - your ramekins might be bigger or smaller. Keep checking the souffles until they get puffy.
Now they're not going to stay puffy for long, so if you want to impress your guests you've have to serve the cheese souffles immediately.
Five minutes later, they're still going to be hot, delicious. They're just going to be kind of deflated a little bit. But don't you be deflated because they're going to be so delicious.
Enjoy your cheese souffles!
