Hairy Bikers Cheese Souffle Recipe

Bake them the day before, which is what makes this Hairy Bikers cheese souffle recipe from Mums Still Know Best worth planning for. And 100g of mature Cheddar, three eggs and a Gruyère topping make 6, roughly 310 calories each by my count, in two hours including cooling.

“A punchy mixture of mature Cheddar and Gruyère makes these soufflés hard to beat”, says the headnote, though the Gruyère only arrives at the reheat. So the first bake is a Cheddar, mustard and chive souffle that rises and cools, and the Gruyère and cream come later.

Fold a fifth of the whisked whites in first, because the BBC version explains that this slackens the sauce before the rest go in gently. Then keep the oven door shut for the first ten minutes, which is another rule the BBC page adds to the book.

Hairy Bikers Cheese Souffle Recipe

Author: Alex Saidani Cooking Method:Baking Cuisine:British French Courses:Starter Dinner

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 20 minutesCook time: 40 minutesRest time:1 hour Total time:2 hours Servings:6 servingsCalories:310 kcal Best Season:Summer

Description

Onion and bay steep in milk before it goes into a butter and flour roux with Cheddar, mustard, nutmeg and chives. Then egg yolks and stiffly whisked whites go through the sauce, and six ramekins bake for 20 minutes and cool, about an hour for me. Once turned out they keep in the fridge for a day, and the second bake under Gruyère and cream takes 10 minutes.

Ingredients

For the souffles:

• 1 small onion, peeled and cut into wedges
• 275ml whole milk
• 1 bay leaf
• 40g butter, plus extra for greasing
• 40g plain flour
• 100g mature Cheddar cheese, coarsely grated
• 1 tsp English mustard (or 2 tsp Dijon mustard)
• Freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1 heaped tbsp chopped chives, plus extra to garnish
• Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

For the second bake:

• 50g Gruyère cheese (or mature Cheddar), finely grated
• 6 tbsp double cream

Instructions

1. Prepare the ramekins: butter 6 x 150ml ovenproof ramekins and line each base with a disc of baking parchment. Then set them on a baking tray.
2. Infuse the milk: put 1 small onion, cut into wedges, in a pan with 275ml whole milk and 1 bay leaf. Bring it to a gentle simmer over a low heat and cook for 5 minutes, watching that it does not boil over. Then set it aside for a couple of minutes.
3. Make the sauce: preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6, then melt 40g butter in a non-stick pan and stir in 40g plain flour. After a minute, strain the milk, keeping around 250ml, and stir it in gradually, cooking for 2 minutes until smooth and thick.
4. Add the cheese: stir in 100g coarsely grated mature Cheddar, 1 tsp English mustard and a grating of nutmeg. Once the cheese has melted, after 1 to 2 minutes, stir in 1 heaped tbsp chopped chives and season well. Then leave it in a bowl for 5 minutes.
5. Add the eggs: separate the 3 eggs and stir the yolks into the sauce one at a time. Whisk the whites until stiff but not dry, fold in about a fifth with a metal spoon, and gently fold in the rest.
6. First bake: spoon the mixture into the ramekins until it almost reaches the top. Bake in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes until very well risen and golden, without opening the door for the first 10. Then leave them to cool in the ramekins.
7. Turn out and chill: once cold, slide a knife round each ramekin and turn the souffle out onto your hand. Peel off the parchment disc and tip it the right way up onto a parchment-lined tray. Then cover with cling film and chill for up to 24 hours.
8. Second bake: 15 minutes before serving, preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6, uncover the souffles and sprinkle over 50g finely grated Gruyère. Spoon 1 tbsp double cream over each, bake for 10 minutes until hot and melting, and serve at once with extra chives.

FAQs

Is this the double baked cheese souffle on BBC Food?

Yes, the BBC page is this recipe from the Mums Know Best series, and the two differ in a few small places. On BBC the first bake is 15 to 20 minutes, not 20, and you peel the parchment disc, which the book skips and I keep. Also, the cold souffles sit upside down on the BBC tray, where the book tips them the right way up.

Can I make a goats cheese souffle instead?

Use one of their two goats’ cheese recipes instead, since a soft cheese behaves differently in the sauce, though neither is twice-baked. In British Classics 200g of goats’ cheese fills 4 Parmesan-dusted ramekins for 15 minutes at 220C, with the Parmesan kept to the centre. Or Chicken and Egg bakes 300g in one 13cm dish with a paper collar for 25 minutes, which they promise “will rise like Dave’s forehead”.

What is the Hairy Bikers crab souffle?

It comes from their 2006 cookbook, and it folds a whole dressed crab through a Gruyère sauce sharpened with tomato purée, mustard powder and tabasco. Because the ramekins bake in a roasting tin with an inch of water for 20 minutes at 180C, it is the gentlest of the lot.

Will they rise again on the second bake?

A little, and Chicken and Egg says so about its twice-baked blue cheese ones: “the rise is never as good the second time around”. But nobody minds, because those 10 minutes are for getting them hot and melting the cheese, with the cream running down the sides. As for the roux, a beer version tops their Welsh rarebit and the milk version over their cauliflower cheese, where it never rises.

What do you serve cheese souffles with, and can they be frozen?

The book calls them dinner party food and files them under posh nosh, so I serve them as a starter with a few dressed leaves. Or at Christmas I swap in their prawn cocktail, since Si has that before the turkey every year. For lunch, British Classics gives its goats’ cheese souffles “a bit of salad”, and their cheese and onion quiche covers anyone wanting seconds. As for freezing, I have not tested it and the book does not mention it, so the fridge is the limit.