For the past few years in celebration of Black History Month, Meiko (Meiko and the Dish) and Aaron (The Hungry Hutch) have coordinated a virtual potluck, where 28 Black food bloggers contribute original recipes from the vast African diaspora. This year, our podcast's bringing a few dishes to the table—listen in and cook along with us.
On Play Me a Recipe, your favorite cooks will walk you through their most treasured recipes, offering all the insider tips, stories, and tricks you won't get from a written recipe—and you'll be right alongside them, every step of the way. Feel free to pause, jump back, or navigate the steps via the podcast chapters.
If you're cooking along, here's the recipe we're making today. Go ahead and grab the ingredients below (Sohla starts listing them at 1:22) before starting the episode.
Serves 4
Excerpted from IN PURSUIT OF FLAVOR by Edna Lewis. Copyright © 1988 by Edna Lewis. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Is there a recipe you'd like to hear us make? Email it to us at podcasts@food52.com!
Lobby Time Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sohla El-Waylly: Soothing sounds of cooking in the background while you cook. We can cook along together. Yeah?
Sohla: Hi, this is Play Me A Recipe. I'm Sohla El-Waylly, a Food52 resident, coming to you from my kitchen in the East Village. Today we'll be making Edna Lewis's Cheese Soufflé, which is linked in the show notes and on Food52.com. But we'll be gathering ingredients, breaking eggs, whisking, baking everything alongside each other, so feel free to pause or jump back using the podcast chapters if you need a little more time.
(musical interlude)
Sohla: Okay, so today I'm gonna make one of my favorite dishes: cheese soufflé, a recipe from Edna Lewis. I know a lot of people think cheese soufflés a really scary, but it's actually--it's actually not that hard. When I was a kid, I was really amused by it, because it has this reputation of being so difficult, like it collapses, you gotta be quiet, all this stuff. So I got really obsessed with making it. Edna Lewis's cheese soufflé was one of the first ones I made, and it was not good in the beginning, but I eventually got there, and I hope you give it a try because you'll get there, too. And the great thing is, it's loaded up with so much cheese that even if it falls, even if it overbakes, it's still delicious. So it's a really fun thing to try and work on until you get there.
Sohla: Okay, so, cheese soufflé. We're gonna start with high quality cheese. Edna Lewis wants you to use the sharpest cheddar you can find. We're going to do five ounces of sharp white cheddar, three ounces of Gruyère to like, balance it out and bring a little nutty funk. Two tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of flour, one cup of milk, five eggs. I've already separated them. We're gonna use five egg whites and three egg yolks. Half a teaspoon salt, a quarter teaspoon cayenne, one teaspoon of dry mustard--you know, to add a little spice. Spice and cheese is good. That's it. Super simple.
Sohla: So we begin. Shall we begin? So for the recipe, she tells you to start by pre-heating your oven to 425 degrees, which I've done, and we're gonna do a little bit of prep before we get into anything. So I'm going to butter a 1.5 quart soufflé dish. Well, I don't actually have a soufflé dish, but I've made this before. You can really use whatever vessel you've got. That's about 1.5 quarts. This is my rice pot. It's exactly 1.5 quarts. So that's what I'm gonna be using today. And it's like, it's kind of like a soufflé dish, like it's tall. It's going to do what it needs to do. I've also done this like an individual portions. You could do this in six coffee mugs that are like heatproof, which is really cute, so you can get individual soufflés.
If you haven't made a soufflé, this is a good one to start with. It's really just like basic, cheesy, delicious. I really like the addition of, like, mustard and cayenne. The thing that really surprised me with Edna Lewis, is um, it says Southern Cooking. But there's a lot of French influence in there. That's what's really cool with Southern cooking. There's like, there's influence from all over.
Sohla: I really like to smear butter on with my hands because you're gonna lose it all to the paper towel. No one's telling you to butter a paper towel. They're telling you butter the dish. Okay. Alright, well, now I need a paper towel. (laughing) Okay. Alright, so my oven is pre-heating. Edna wants you to pop this on top of the oven so it stays warm for when we go to fill it up. Next, we're going to grate our cheese. Oh, you know, a lot of people put a collar on the soufflé. That's like a restaurant thing. The collar, and then there's like a little thumb trick that you go around and even it out. That makes sure that it rises, like, tall and straight. But it doesn't really matter, you know? It's gonna still taste good. I don't care if it's a little bit wonky. I don't need, like, a perfect straight tall soufflé. You know, I like the au naturel vibe. Save your parchment for something else.
Alright, so next we're going to grate our cheese. This is all about the cheese, so the most important thing is, don't use something like American cheese. That's not gonna--not only does that not have much flavor, but the texture is gonna be a little bit weird, because that stuff has a lot of emulsifiers, which is good sometimes, but it's not good for a soufflé, So just go for the best cheddar and the best gruyère or Swiss-style cheese or something like emmenthaler or Appenzeller. But Edna tells you, get the best cheese you can find. She's not messing around. She knows her soufflés. I got some, I got some good stuff. I got some really good stuff. I got like, I got really good--this is like the really good cheddar where it has, like those little crystals in it from the aging. You know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about? This is the good stuff.
So just grating it on a box grater. This is going to make sure that it melts quickly and evenly into our Mornay sauce. So the base of a cheese soufflé is a Mornay sauce that we then add whipped egg whites to, and that's really it. It's, um, you know, because it's French it sounds fancy, but it's just like their version of queso, you know? It's like, fluffy queso. So that's all we're doing here. You've made queso, you've eaten queso, you can make a soufflé. You're like, halfway there.
Edna Lewis is like the Julia Child, but for Southern cooking. So if you want to get into Southern cooking, it's a good place to start. But for me it was just like the first soufflé that I wanted to go for. You know, I just really liked soufflés as a kid. I would just get to the point where I was banging out one egg soufflés for myself. Alrighty. So our cheese is grated.
Sohla: Now we're going to start making our Mornay sauce, so I'm gonna first melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. You wanna go for something with rounded, rounded edges instead of like a sharp corner, because it's easier for the whisk to get in there. If you've got a pot like that, it just helps prevent lumps. And we're gonna let this butter melt until it's nice and foamy before adding our flour. This is super important. First time I tried to make a Mornay or bechamel, I just dumped it both in there and--dumped the flour and butter together. And you just end up with something really lumpy from the start that you just--you're not gonna be able to whisk those lumps out. So by waiting until the butter is melted and foamy, flour's gonna incorporate much faster and you're not gonna have any lumps.
The main thing with with making a sauce like this is lump management. That's the most important part. Make sure we fight the lumps from step one. It has melted, but I'm gonna wait until it foams. Very important. You want to see a little bit of foaming action. That just means that the butter is hot. So butter has fat and water in it, and it starts to foam when that water starts toe reach, like, boiling temperature, which is what you want because that means that our flour is going to very quickly incorporate and be lump free. Our butter is foaming, so I added all the flour all at once, and it's like instantly smooth, instantly smooth. We're not trying to get any color here. We just want to cook off that raw, floury taste. So it's just gonna take maybe a minute or two, whisking the whole time to make sure that it heats evenly. The color kind of goes from this yellowy to like a foamy white. And that's how you know you're there, and you know that you're the raw taste from your flour has cooked off.
One really, like, common mistake people make when they're making bechamel or Mornay is they just don't cook the flour enough, and then you end up tasting it. You can taste this like starchiness, even through the cheese. It's more likely to develop a really thick skin that way too, if you don't cook out the starch. But we're not making, like, a gumbo kind of roux. We don't want any color. We're not going for brown, tan, none of that. We're staying blond here. (whisking sounds) I can smell it. I can smell that the flour is getting toasty, and that's how you know we are there. Okay, so flour's smelling toasty. That's how we know we're there. We're not going for any color, just cooking off the rawness.
So now I have one cup of milk that's just been barely warmed. And once again, lump management from the start. So we're gonna drizzle in just a little bit at a time, and you're gonna see as soon as you drizzle it in, it kind of gets tight, and you're gonna freak out. Just keep whisking, whisking. And as you finish adding in all of your milk, it'll thin out. Oh, God, it's getting brown! I was talking too much. (laughing) So after the first splash, it looks real tight. Don't worry. Just keep adding no more than a tablespoon at a time in this beginning stage, so we can ensure smooth Mornay action. And because we're using warm milk, it just comes together, all...like a little bit faster. Make sure--it's become like a paste, make sure that that paste is nice and smooth before you go in with the next splash of milk. Sometimes this becomes like a two handed affair for me, you know. But check out--since I've got this pot with these round sides, I can get in and make sure every little bit of this roux is getting nice and smooth.
(musical interlude)
Sohla: So we're just--we're just adding the milk a little bit at a time until it becomes smooth. You wanna make sure--you're gonna add a splash of milk and make sure it's nice and smooth before you have the next splash. That's how you make sure you don't have lumps. That's the most important thing here. If you add all your milk at once--I mean, I've seen like I've seen Jacques Pépin, when he makes his, uh, Mornay, he puts all the milk in there at once, but he's Jacques Pépin, okay? None of us are that good. Make it easy on yourself. Just add a tablespoon at a time. You're gonna get there. I mean, this is--I know soufflé sounds fancy, but this is no different from the beginning of a mac and cheese or a queso. Alright, all of the milk is in way. We did it, guys. I think that might be the hardest part. No, we're whisking eggs. We're not at the hardest part yet. Alright, I'm gonna turn this off.
Now I'm going to switch to a rubber spatula. So now that we have our smooth bechemel, I'm going to stir in my egg yolks until they're nice and homogenized. Now we're gonna drop in all of the cheese. We're gonna add all of the cheese into this hot sauce, and the heat from the sauce is gonna help it all melt. And it's become--it's gonna become really ooey and gooey and melty. We're folding the cheese. Just just keep folding in the cheese. And then I'm going to add half a teaspoon of kosher salt, a quarter teaspoon of cayenne, and one full teaspoon of dry mustard. This is going to season it up, and it's really nice. The heat from the mustard and cayenne kind of gives you those, like, mac and cheese vibes. I'm really into it. Mix this up until, like everything is very well incorporated. We're doing this off the heat because cheese--the cheese can really easily break if it gets too hot. So we're just gonna let it gently melt from the residual heat of the sauce. So I'm just stirring this until it looks mostly--mostly creamy, mostly melted. It's got some little bits that haven't totally melted, but that's okay, because it's gonna hang out for a minute while we whip our eggs. And as it just sits on top of the stove, it'll fully melt. I'm gonna meet you back here in a few minutes.
Sohla: Hey, it's Sohla and we're back to Play Me A Recipe. Just as a reminder, we're making Edna Lewis's cheese soufflé. The sauce has been hanging out on top of the stove so that cheese has gotten nice and melty, and now we're gonna whip our egg whites.
Sohla: Here I have five egg whites, clean bowl, clean whisk, and we're just--we're gonna whip it. We're gonna whip it. It's not so bad, you know. You're just moving the whisk around. Now, we're going for soft peaks here. Because the soufflé is all about puff, you might think that you need stiff peaks, but actually, if you--if you overwhip it, then what happens is, when it goes in the oven, it's got nowhere to go. It's got too much air in it already, so it will just collapse. When you have soft peaks, what happens is, there's just enough air in there so that when it gets in the oven, that air expands and there's still room for the egg white proteins to, you know, lift grow. So soft peaks, nothing crazy. Don't lose your head. The main thing with egg whites, I found, is that you need a bigger bowl than you think, so you've got room for your whisk to, like, groove.
So I haven't been doing it that long, and you can see it's already getting really frothy. Just after a little bit, we're getting, like, good froth, good bubblage, I don't think whisking form is that important. Do whatever form is comfortable for you. I like--as I get tired, I change my form. This is just frothy. We currently have no peaks. Let's keep going. Because we want soft peaks, it's very easy to overwhisk, so just stop frequently and check and make sure you're not going too far. I mean, this is happening pretty fast. We're like, almost there. The foam is looking tighter, like the bubbles are finer. We don't have that like, frothy look anymore. It's starting to hold trails. I have--I have a little, like, it is holding some trails. I think we are very close. I have no peak, though, but we're almost there. It's very easy in a machine to go over at this point. A lot of times, if I'm going for a soft peak in a machine, I'll stop early and finish it by hand. But then it's like, eh, you made this thing dirty for no reason. So you might as well do it by hand, you know?
I'm getting fluffy. I'm holding a trail. I have soft peak. Check it out. That didn't even take that long, guys, hm? It folds over. That's what you want. So if you look in the bowl, when you lift up your whisk, it should hold a little, a little like, uh, you know, Dairy Queen swirl situation. And it holds it on top of the whisk, too. So now when we get here, you have to move quickly. Because there is no sugar, there's no time. You gotta get folding quickly, or this is just gonna dry out and get really lumpy right in front of your eyes, so we're gonna fold our meringue into our base.
Sohla: The way you do this is, you want to do it in parts. We're gonna start with one third of the mixture, and with the first third of the mixture, just get in there, stir it in. We're lightening up our base. This is very heavy. You're taking something very heavy and adding something very light, so you've got to kind of do it in stages. So for the first third, get aggressive. Don't worry about it. We're just lightening up the mix.
Now, for the second third, I'm gonna be a little bit more careful, okay? Now we're going for more of a folding action. So folding--what you do is, you wanna cut down the middle with your spatula and then kind of like, scooch underneath your whole situation and fold it over. I know, I know it doesn't look like you're actually folding, but you kind of are. So it's like, you cut and you scooch and you turn your bowl. There's this whole wonderful thing that happens when you do that. You're preserving all that air and that meringue that we whipped by hand. We took so much care to whip. And I'm not gonna go until it's fully incorporated. Just--there's some streaks in there at this point, and that's okay. Now I'm adding my last third of egg whites, and you can see it's only been sitting here for a moment, and it's already looking dry because without sugar, egg whites really don't live for very long. We're getting in there, we're folding this last bit. For this last bit, I'm going to try and make it mostly streak free, but it's better to have some streaks than to lose all your volume. I'm at a place where we are good to go. It's not like, perfectly homogenous, and that's good. That's fine. If you take it all the way, you're gonna lose too much volume.
So I got my warm dish. Woo, quite warm. Gonna put this in. Now, things are gonna happen quickly. I've got my warm dish. I'm gonna add my soufflé mixture to it. We're going to go into a 425 degree oven, bake it for five minutes and then turn down the heat to 400 degrees and let it go for another 15. Alright, here we go. Batter's going in, and now we're going right into the oven. Make sure you got enough room for that thing to grow. So 425, we start with this high heat, which is gonna help the air bubbles in the foam that we just created expand, lift. And then we're going back down to 400 degrees. And then it's gonna kind of set. It doesn't take that long to cook. 15 minutes, the top's gonna get golden brown, it's gonna lift. We're gonna have a little crusty, cheesy thing on top. And then the inside will be nice and creamy and gooey.
(musical interlude)
Sohla: It smells really cheesy. Alright, this is looking good. Not so bad. Not so hard. Nice brown top, a little bit crisp from all that cheese. But if you peek in there, it's still moist. Now, the key is, this is gonna deflate pretty quickly. So you want to get--you wanna, you wanna knock it down before it knocks down on itself. Do you know what I mean? Take control of your soufflé. So just go straight down the middle with a big spoon. Oh, yeah. The biggest spoon you got, you know? Do you see how steamy? What's really great is, the edges get really brown from the contact with the pan. I'm going to get a nice big scoop to serve myself. Ooh, so steamy. It's set, nicely cooked. It's still really creamy, but it's not raw. You know what I mean? There's a difference. You don't want a raw soufflé. This is like, custardy. This really nice custardy interior to contrast the brown golden outside vibes. It just looks like the best fluffy omelet in the world. And, uh, I mean, there you go. We did it. It's a freaking soufflé.
I'm gonna go in while it's hot. Make sure you serve this right away, eat this right away. You wanna have this while it's hot. Okay. I'm gonna get my favorite thing. I'm gonna get a little bit of this crusty, crusty from the edge. A little bit of this saucy from the middle. It's perfect. Super creamy. Very cheesy. Nice, like, eggy vibes. I could eat one of these, like every day.
Sohla: Thanks so much for joining me today on Play Me A Recipe. Tell me how it went by leaving a review. The recipe is linked in the show notes and on Food52.com. And you can find me on Instagram at @sohlae. And if you wanna watch a full video of me making this recipe, head over to Food52's YouTube channel, and uh, I'll see you next time.