Hi there. I’m going to show you how to make an asparagus and Gruyère cheese soufflé today.
Hi guys. I’m going to show you how to make an asparagus soufflé, but you can use the basic template to make a soufflé of any vegetable of your choice. I’m just going to put some olive oil into a pan. Whilst I’m waiting for that to heat up, just a quick mention, I took a pound of asparagus and I blanched it in boiling water until it was quite soft. Normally, I don’t like to cook asparagus as much as I have cooked these, but we are going to be blending them up in a minute, so we don’t have to be too precious about that.
Just give it a couple more seconds, when they start to sort of sizzle up. I’m just going to turn this up. There we go. When they start to make that sizzle, you know that you’re in business. That’s what I’m after.
Whilst I’m just waiting for that to really get going, I’m just going to tell you what else is going in the mix. The best way of incorporating flavour into anything that has mushrooms is to let the mushrooms sop up the flavour. Here, we’ve got coriander and mustard powder. I’ve also got some fresh thyme and some garlic. The garlic I’m going to put in now and just give those a quick toss. There we go. Half the powder goes in and coriander. That then goes in. I’m going to put a little bit more oil in there so that I can get, there we go. Right. Keep those moving. Actually, I’m going to keep that cooking for two or three minutes, just to get some real colour into it.
I’m going to move that out of the way so everyone can get an idea of what I’m doing. Those onions are now nicely caramelised. The only reason I’m putting them in such a tall container is we’re going to blitz up the asparagus now. It’s quite easy to blend at this point. If you do it in a sort of shallower dish, you don’t really get the blend, and it’s no good adding moisture to it because then the souffles don’t really work. We did try that. It’s now going to get quite noisy.
I’ve got a nice thick asparagus mixture. That is going to go straight into a pan. I’m going to set that aside because we’re going to do a couple of other things. I’m actually going to do this in one take because that’s what I’m known for.
I want to prepare a ramekin. Can we see that, Martin? You’re going to direct me from this point. I’m just going to rub a little bit of butter into the ramekin. I’ve got some bread crumbs that I prepared earlier, and I’m going to shove those in. I’m just going to go around like that, and I’m going to leave some in the base as well. That’s what the finished ramekin looks like.
That’s the second part, which is great. I’m going to have a little tidy up here. Then, we’ll come back and we’re going to do the béchamel which is basically the milk which we’re going to cook down with some flour, and we’re going to make a roux with butter and flour. Then, we’re going to mix everything together, fold it in some egg white using this thing, and then stick them in the oven.
What we’ve got to do now is make the béchamel. The first thing we have to do to make the béchamel is make a roux. I’m going to just melt that butter down. The butter’s all melted, so the flour goes in. It looks like a lot flour, so I’m not going to put all of it in just yet. Give that a good old mix. The milk goes in. Now, actually, funny enough, I’ve just spotted that there’s quite a lot of flour in the corners. That’s likely to burn, so get those out.
Put the milk in. I’m going to whisk into the milk. It’s thickening through nicely. If you look at that, that’s the back of the spoon coated. I’m just going to keep going. I want to mix out those lumps. I’m going to do that off the heat.
I’m just going to add all that cheese. I’m going to do it in parts, because if you put all of it in it might overwhelm the béchamel. You want to make sure the cheese melts all the way through. Here we go. Lovely.
That béchamel is now going to be added to the asparagus mix. In it goes. I’ve got some egg yolks which I’m going to plunk in. There you go. Give that a good old whisk. I’m going to let this cool down for a second because I don’t want it to be too hot.
Actually, what I’ve done over here, you can see the texture now. Can you see that? What we’ll do is we’ll start mixing the first batch of whites. I use those. I’m actually going to use the whisk. It doesn’t really matter how much you stir the first batch. It’s just to get the mixture going.
I’m going to fold in the next batch, but I’m going to try and do it in a way that you can actually see. Yeah, you can see that. I’m going to put the rest of this mixture, the rest of that, into that. We’re going to put it in the ramekins and bake it off. That mixture, I don’t want to over-mix it. I’m just going to tip it into each ramekin as neatly as I possibly can. We can straighten it out towards the end, or you can do it this way and actually just spoon it in. I’m going to straighten them out like so.
The final thing to do once you’ve put them in the ramekins is just run your thumb all the way around to loosen it from the edge. What I’m going to do now is just take these, stick them in the oven. Significantly, they’re in a bain-marie, a bath of boiling water. They’ll cook off for probably about 25 minutes on 150.
I’m just going to pull one of the soufflés out of the oven for presentation. Here we go. There you have an asparagus soufflé.
Thanks for watching. As regular viewers will know, if you left a nice review on either Google or Facebook, your name gets entered into here. This week it is Rosanna McPhee. Rosanna, thanks for doing that.
Next week I’m going to show you how to make ice cream, and the dish that we’re going to do is peach melba. Do tune in. It’s a good one.