Creme Brûlée from New BGE Cookbook

A crazy work schedule that started with 12 hour days 7 days a week, ramped up to 14-16 and ended with several 20 hour days have sadly kept me away from my Eggs for the last month. But the overtime money paid for a second pit controller (DidgiQ DX2)for my baking Egg and a great new cookbook. The tile is Smoke It LIKE A PRO subtitled On the Big Green Egg and Other Kamado Cookers. It is written by Eric Mitchell, who together with his wife Cindi, have a competition BBQ team using BGE's called Yabba Dabba Que. He also appears at dealer events on behalf of the Northeast distributer for Big Green Eggs. He does demo cooks and evangelizes the Egg. I have had the pleasure of sampling his food at 4 events sponsored by my BGE Dealer, Oasis Hot Tub & Sauna, as well as the last two NewEGGlandfests, He makes some typical BBQ fare but also makes an eclectic variety of foods. Some of the items he makes I never dreamed of making on the Egg, or any other other cooker for that matter. I heard about this book about a year ago now and I couldn't wait for it to come out. 

The book didn't disappoint. It has the wide mix of foods that Eric does at the cooking demos as well as traditional BBQ items. This book has lots of great recipes, but equally important it has lots of info about setting up and using the Egg to make this wide variety of food types. Of all the BGE Cookbooks I have seen, this one has the most information about setup and methods. It should be the first cookbook a newbie Egger gets. For those of you who are interested, I have posted a review of the book on my blog:

Smoke It LIKE A PRO

Here is an example of a recipe from the book I made yesterday: Creme Brûlée. The idea of doing that on the grill never occurred to me. This is one of my favorite desserts. Now that I know how to make it I must be careful or I will soon look like the Michelin Man. Here are the pictures:


The ingredients were simple: Heavy cream, 9 egg yokes, confectioners sugar, a vanilla bean, maple syrup & I added a little table salt to help bring out the flavors. I used my hand mixer for the whisking tasks (center) and an egg separator (left) to get the egg yolks.






The egg separator made collecting the yolks idiot proof. You break the egg using the edge of the orange clip in the middle and pour the egg into the well on the right. The well holds the yolk and allows the whites to drain down into the cup below. You flip the well over and it dumps the yolk into the left container.






The egg yolks and heavy cream get mixed together and are added to the sauce pan together with the vanilla bean, maple sugar and a little salt. This mixture is heated to just before a simmer (scalded). 








The scalded  egg mixture is slowly combined with some reserved heavy cream. The resulting mixture is run through a strainer to filter out the vanilla bean casing and any eggs that may have started to scramble. I strained it into a large measuring cup.  I took my time doing the various steps, so the eggs didn't scramble, I just captured the vanilla bean casings. The final product is ready to be baked.






The finished batter is poured into 4 oz. ramekins arranged in a deep sided baking dish. Boiling water is added for a water bath. One lesson I learned is next time I will bring the kettle outside and fill the baking dish just before I place it on the Egg. Coming from the Kitchen with a filled pan was a bit of an adventure.




The creme brûlée is on the Egg which was preheated to 300 using the DigiQ DX2. I was using the AR with the oval pizza stone at level 1.5 and a 16" round s/s grid at Level 6. This puts it above the felt line and slightly into the dome. The cook lasted 40 minutes and was handled totally by the DidgiQ.  This freed me up to work on some Chicken & Brisket Brunswick Stew.




After 40 minutes the Creme Brûlée was done. I randomly checked 3 of the ramekins  with my Thermapen and the temp was at 175 where it was supposed to be.






The creme brûlée was allowed to cool for 15 minutes on a cooling rack and then the ramekins were covered with plastic cling wrap and went into the fridge to set for 4 hours.








Even though i wasn't going to be using these until the following day, I decided to try some "Quality Control Samples" it also gave me an excuse to try out my new Creme Brûlée butane torch. I set 2 ramekins on a sheet pan to help protect the counter. 







I spread Turbinado sugar across the top of the custard and heated it with the torch. The torch worked quickly and easily I am happy to say. Then it was back to the fridge for 30 minutes.




This 30 minute wait seemed like days. The end results were in a word: Excellent!! Now I must learn restraint when it comes to this dessert.

Definitely check out the new Smoke It LIKE A PRO cookbook, there is something in there for everyone.

Jim