Ladies and gentlemen, we are being robbed! The souffle might be just about the world’s poshest dessert, much loved by snooty French waiters in tails and white gloves, but actually it’s a rort by smart places to sell us hot air.
The truth is souffles are both ridiculously easy and amazingly cheap to make at home, yet a prolonged campaign has us running scared of them. I put part of that fear down to that accent on the end of souffle, which automatically makes it look too elite and tricky for us “mere” home cooks.
It’s time for us home cooks to reclaim the souffle.
High dish, low cost
You want some extra motivation? Think on this: While some top restaurants want to charge us $25 a pop for souffle, you can make them at home for under $1 each.
There is no restaurant dish – other than maybe risotto – where we pay such a criminal mark-up. That should be motivation enough to make you want to master it.
Simple science
Souffles are a very simple science, the combination of these three scientific facts: egg proteins solidify as they cook; heat turns liquids to gases; and heated gases such as air expand and rise.
Think of when you boil a liquid and how bubbles burst up from its surface; so it is with a souffle.
The hot steamy air has to force its way upwards because it can’t escape from the sides of the ramekin. As it pushes upwards trying to escape, it takes the souffle with it.
If the souffle has a good crust on the top this gives the air something else to push against in its quest to free itself – just as a boiling pot of water rattles the lid of the saucepan as the steam forces its way out. In a souffle, the egg whites trap the air as they set, giving us high, handsome beauties.
Simple! Now, let’s cook ’em.
Top tip #1
To help you achieve home souffle success, I’ve recruited some of the best souffle makers in the world to share their simple secrets so you can make no-fail souffles at home.
It might seem strange that such a simple dish could vary so much, but the best souffles I have ever eaten have been Michel Roux’s at The Waterside Inn, just outside London. This pretty three-star restaurant on the banks of the Thames has them down pat.
Michel is one of my culinary heroes and maintains the secret to a good souffle is using eggs that are neither too fresh nor too cold, and beating the whites in metal or china bowls, rather than plastic, because these surfaces repel fat. Fat – and egg yolk, which has fat in it – is the enemy of achieving fluffy egg whites.
He also suggests always adding a little salt or sugar to your whites halfway through beating them to “maintain their volume”.
Michel’s other key tip is to ensure that – regardless of whether you are folding a sweet or savoury base into your egg whites – it should never be cold, because this makes it harder to incorporate into the whites. This results in you knocking the air out of them, and thus the rise out of the souffle.
Top tip #2
Over the past few months, the dessert that has blown me away has been the apricot souffle from Press Food + Wine in Adelaide.
Chef-owner Andrew Davies explains that the most important factors in making successful souffles are oven temperature and correctly lining your mould or ramekin with butter and an even coating of sugar.
“Your souffles need the heat to kickstart them and good lubricant to rise evenly,” he says.
Top tip #3
Souffles can come as sweet or savoury, and a cheese souffle is a great place to start.
One of the most memorable moments in my five years as creative director of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival was watching a hands-on masterclass where ace pastry chef Philippa Sibley was teaching souffle making to a ragtag bag of souffle novices.
The look on their faces as they pulled out a succession of high and handsome souffles the first time was priceless.
Her great tip to help their souffles rise was to draw a fingernail around the inside edge of the ramekins before popping them in the oven.
Ten tips to keep your souffle high and handsome
- Use eggs at room temperature to maximise your rise. Avoid super fresh eggs.
- Preheat your oven to 200C. A hot oven is crucial to souffle success because it cooks the outside making it hard for the hot air to escape. This is what propels the souffle skywards.
- Use long straight strokes to butter your ramekins. It helps the souffle´ to rise if the strokes all run upwards up the sides.
- Evenly coat the inside of the ramekin with sugar (or cheese or breadcrumbs if you are doing a savoury souffle).
- Fold in the egg whites gently to maximise the air incorporated in the souffle. It is the expansion of this air that will help the souffle rise.
- Score around the top edge of the souffle with a thumbnail or blade of a knife to help keep the top loose and able to move upwards.
- An old chef’s trick to help the rise of the souffle is to turn the grill on to slightly gratinate the top first. This helps form a crust which the steam created by cooking can push upwards against – taking the rest of the souffle with it.
- The cooking rate of the souffle depends on the temperature of the souffle mix. A cold mix results in a cooked top and sides, but a middle that’s soggy and undercooked.
- Only cook the souffles when the guests are ready to eat them. Like love, souffles can be fleeting; wonderful and voluminous one moment, flat and deflated the next.
- Another restaurant ruse shared by souffle snout Mr George Calombaris is that some places speed up the cooking of their souffles by giving them a five-second blitz in the microwave and then another one. Apparently your souffle will take half the time to cook in the oven.
- Follow Matt Preston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mattscravat
Information in this article is correct as of 23 April 2013.
Matt Preston writes for the taste section, available every Tuesday in The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun, every Wednesday in The Advertiser and in Perth’s Sunday Times.
