Savory Egg Custard
December 10, 2018
This is a savory, comforting, creamy egg custard with cheese and garlic. I like to use some of the techniques from Japanese Chawan Mushi to make the custard incredibly smooth, like passing the liquid through a sieve or cheese cloth to aerate and smooth the mixture before cooking.
You can make this custard in a stove using a bain-marie (water bath) method, but I find the Instant Pot method to be much more predictable and easy.
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg yolks
- 8 ounces milk
- 1 garlic cloves
- thyme, fresh sprig or handful of loose dry leaves
- bay leaf
- 1 ounce gruyere cheese, grated
- pinch cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Heat the milk, garlic, bay leaf, and thyme in a saucepan until it begins to steam and then remove from the heat and thyme and set aside to cool.
- Whisk the eggs, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne in a bowl. Add the grated cheese.
- When the milk has cooled to the point that it is not emitting visible smoke, remove the garlic, thyme, and bay leaf and pour the milk into the egg mixture and blend well.
- Pour the mixture through a fine mesh sieve or cheese cloth into two ramekins.
- Cover the ramekins tightly with foil.
- Place the trivet inside the Instant Pot or pressure cooker and add 1 cup of water.
- Place each ramekin on the trivet inside the Instant Pot. If you've increased the recipe, you can stack the ramekins.
- On the Instant Pot, press the "Steam" button and adjust to pressure cook on low heat for 7 minutes. Let the pressure cooker come to a natural release, about 7-8 minutes.
- Remove the lid and carefully remove the ramekins using gloves or tongs. Remove the cover from the custard and let rest for 5 minutes before serving immediately.
Written by Will Chiong who lives and works in New York building useful things.