Friday, October 30, 2009

Sous Vide Lemon Low Carb Custard

The Sous Vide equipment makes this super easy. Takes me less than 5 minutes to prepare! I love egg custard because it tastes great but it was always a hassle to do it on the stovetop and I never really tried it in the oven. But in my sous vide, it is a dream! I'm going through eggs like mad between this and having my hummus omelet again.

  1. Crack 6 eggs into a bowl, pick out any shell.
  2. Pour them into my blender.
  3. Add to blender sweetener equivalent to 1/3 cup of sugar (to taste). This time I used Lo Han and Splenda.
  4. Add about 1/3 cup of lemon juice or more if you want more lemon-y goodness.
  5. Add about 1/2 tsp of vanilla.
  6. Blend well.
  7. Taste, adjust as needed.
If you are afraid of raw eggs then you can always use your SV (sous vide) equipment to pasteurize the eggs (135' for 1 hour 15 minutes) before hand.

Pour the egg mixture into a heavy duty freezer type bag with a good seal. I then fill up a container with water and put my not-completely-sealed bag in there, that forces the air out. Submerge it just until the egg rises to the seal, then finish sealing the bag.

Edit: One suggestion, put a ceramic bowl on the bottom of your sous vide bath.   I think the bottom of the bath gets hotter (if you have a rice maker) and this will keep the eggs from getting too hot should they actually come in contact with the bottom of the SV.

Double check the seal and stick it in the SV bath at 155' for around 30 minutes or when set up nicely.

Slide it into a container and refrigerate or serve hot with raspberries or strawberries.

Edit:
I wanted to add instructions for non-sous vide use. If you don't have a water bath you can make this on the stove top.  Use a double boiler, or create one.  I always just put a metal bowl on top of my pot of boiling water.  Then I pour the mixture into the bowl and stir until it reaches about 160 degrees or starts to leaves trails when you stir.  You have to stir the entire time, otherwise you'll end up with scrambled eggs.  Another thing to be wary of is to make sure that you don't let it heat too quickly.  It should take at least 5 minutes to get up to 160 degrees.  Any faster than that and you might end up with scrambled eggs.

Picture of a homemade double boiler

3 comments:

Rebl'Debl said...

Hi,
Can you tell me what texture / thickness your custard has? IE, is it more like pudding, flan or ????

Rebl'Debl said...

Hi,
Can you tell me the texture of your custard? IE, is it like pudding or flan or ????

Thanks! SV is definitely interesting concept!

Nancy said...

It comes out like a stirred custard, which I would describe almost like a commercial pudding mix firmness. Actually, it gets a little firmer the longer you leave it in the SV. I am finding that about 20 minutes at 150-155 is about right for me. Although I'm still experimenting.

I should document what I'm doing better because I keep forgetting!

Yes, Sous Vide cooking has been a huge improvement in my time use. I get such excellent results cooking meat and eggs.