Meat Lovers Quiche Recipe | Barbara Bakes (2024)

FAQs

Do you have to Prebake crust for quiche? ›

You need a par-baked or fully baked crust if you're making quiche, no-bake pie, custard pie, cream pie, pudding pie, or simply want an extra-crisp pie crust. If you're making a pie that doesn't require a baked filling, you still need a baked crust.

Heavy Cream and Milk – For the best tasting quiche, use a combination of whole milk and heavy cream. (Or simply use half-and-half.) Using just heavy cream produces an overly thick filling. Whole milk is great, but a combo of heavy cream and milk is better.

Follow This Tip: Blind-bake the pie crust before pouring in the custard to ensure a crisp, flaky crust. Just fit the crust into your pie pan, line it with parchment, and fill it with pie weights or beans. Then bake it in a 350°F oven for 20 minutes.

Air bubbles can also lead to cracks, and cracks inevitably lead to leaks. Therefore, for a level, leak-proof crust, a perforated crust is key. If, however, the recipe you're working with has a particularly liquidy filling, poking the bottom isn't a necessary step.

If you don't blind bake with weights, or poke holes into the bottom of the crust, the bottom of the crust can puff up.

Wet pie fillings + raw dough are a tricky combination. If the bottom crust doesn't set before the filling soaks in, it's going to be gummy. A metal pie pan placed on a preheated surface will set the bottom crust quickest; once cooked, the liquids from the filling above won't soak in, and as a result: no soggy bottom.

What Is the Best Eggs-to-Dairy Ratio for Quiche? The ratio maintains your custard's consistency. A good quiche custard typically features: 1 large egg to 1/2 cups of dairy.

According to Real Simple, this typically occurs when adding too-wet ingredients to the quiche filling, layering the egg custard with, for example, large slices of raw tomato or raw zucchini. These vegetables, while tasty, have a high water content when raw, which will weep into the quiche as it bakes.

Add flour to your filling: Adding a bit of flour to your quiche filling helps absorb moisture and stabilize things in general.

"But the quiche will taste better if you allow the final product to cool completely (think several hours or even overnight) before slicing," says Zimmerman. Then, warm up individual slices or serve them at room temperature. (If you won't be enjoying your quiche until the next day, be sure to refrigerate it.

What can you use instead of pie crust for quiche? ›

You might not think about using the box of butter crackers in your pantry for a pie, but you should. Butter crackers, especially the perfect consistency of the Ritz cracker, make for an ideal ingredient to use in a pie crust. This ingredient works well for both savory (like quiches) and sweet pies.

This is how to prep your quiche crust using the homemade or refrigerated option. And yes, as you'll see, you should always prebake quiche crust to avoid a gummy pastry.

Try placing the pie directly on the bottom of the oven. The heat transfer is quicker and no soggy bottom. However, this still may not be enough due to the quick time it takes to cook a quiche. Ohh and make sure you use regular bake (heat from bottom) not convection (heat from back and fanned).

*Wondering what to use instead of baking beans? Dried beans or even dried pasta work just as well.

Add pie weights, dry rice, dried beans or (as I've done here) dry wheat berries, enough to fill the pan 2/3 full. Chill the crust for 30 minutes; this will solidify the fat, which helps prevent shrinkage. Bake in a preheated 375°F oven for 20 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven, and lift out the paper and weights.

If you don't have pie weights, you could use something similar like pennies, dry beans, dry rice, or even sugar. I don't recommend blind baking your crust without anything to weigh it down though, because it will likely lose its shape, bubble, and shrink.

If you are putting in a filling that will not be baked (a refrigerator pie), you might choose to "blind bake" (bake without filling) the crust for a few minutes to give it more color and flavor, but it is not required. If your filling will require baking, there is little reason to bake the crust separately.

Your crust is pale and underbaked.

Easy! Just bake it some more. To ensure a bronzed, shiny crust, I like to give the pie a quick brush with eggwash before sending it back into the oven. Make sure your oven is hot enough: 425° F or 450° F is ideal.