Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

This is the ultimate cheese quiche recipe: a super silky and smooth custard perfectly set in the crispiest and most delicious pie crust you’ve ever had. Unlike a lot of the fillings-topped-with-eggs-in-a-pie-crust quiches out there, this one is all about nailing the cooking technique to produce the best possible version of a quiche. There’s just a handful of ingredients, treated correctly, cooked using the appropriate tools and with an eye toward developing the maximum amount of flavor.That means: blind-baking a pie crust correctly. Too many quiche crusts out there are gummy and pale, basically indistinguishable from their custard. You not only have to make your dough correctly, but you also have to bake it for the right (read: a loooong) amount of time. (You also want the correct pie pan to bake it in.) You want the crust brown, so brown that it takes on the flavors and aromas of browned butter, both because it becomes super delicious and because it won’t sog out when you add the liquid custard. That also means: The custard isn’t a watery, curdled mess. We want it set properly so it’s sliceable, but we don’t want it to set up so firm that it’s rubbery or start to weep liquid. We also don’t want the cheese we add to break and get all greasy, or to melt unevenly and get all rubbery. The perfect custard: smooth, silky, and super tasty.

Ultimate Cheese Quiche