How to make next level quiche Lorraine

1. Homemade pastry

Crumbly pastry makes all the difference to this quiche – ours is flavoured with a cheese, onion and a hint of chilli. Shop-bought pastry is fine, but most of the time it isn’t made with butter, which is what gives it a moreish flaky savoury shortbread texture.

2. Onion flavour without onions

Onion isn’t in a traditional Lorraine, and sliced, cooked onion can ‘drag’ the filling when you’re portioning a quiche, but its flavour works well with cheese and bacon. We’ve made it milder and added it in the form of nigella seeds in the pastry and spring onions in the filling.

3. The perfect tin

For heat distribution, pastry that’s cooked properly and ease of releasing the quiche, your tart tin needs to be metal with a loose bottom. Our favourite choice is a carbon steel fluted tin that’s about 4cm deep. (We have no idea why ceramic quiche dishes even exist – they don’t do the job they were designed for. If you own one, ‘recycle’ it and go and buy a metal one.)

4. Making a good case

We’ve gone to a lot of effort to think about the best way to bake a tart case that is leak-free and doesn’t crack while baking. Firstly, roll the pastry out slightly thicker, then push it right into the corners – this way it won’t be stretched, which means no cracks. Leaving an overhang and trimming once it’s cooked guarantees it won’t shrink and the pastry is flush with the rim of the tin.

5. Smoked pancetta is better

Whether you choose pancetta or bacon, a smoked variety will give you the most flavour. Pancetta is a drier cure than most bacon, which means it cooks without releasing as much liquid. Pre-diced ‘cubetti’ or bacon lardons make things easier, but nothing stops you chopping your own.

6. Fat equals flavour

We’ve made the filling richer and distributed the smoky flavour through the filling by incorporating the fat from the fried pancetta into the cream for the filling base.

7. Three different cheeses

We’ve used three cheeses in this recipe for their different cooking attributes. Parmesan works best when making cheesy pastry, with diced oozy pockets of mature cheddar for its tangy flavour and grated gruyère as a nod to the original Lorraine (and for its melting properties). If three is one cheese too many, ditch the gruyère and just top the quiche with more cheddar.

8. Twice the cream

We used both cream and crème fraîche – the double cream is good for pouring into the pancetta pan and boiling up with the bacon flavour, and the crème fraîche brings a slight sour flavour that cuts through the richness of the filling.

9. Soufflé lightness

We’ve taken the eggs, separated them and whisked up the whites, soufflé style, to puff up and lighten the filling.

10. The right temperature

With its pockets of cheese and its souffléd filling, this quiche is best eaten slightly warm or room temperature on the day it’s cooked. Chilled quiche is just a cold reminder of its former glory and gives quiche a bad name.

See the full recipe for our next level quiche Lorraine.

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