Sous Vide Creme Brulee

This sous vide crème brûlée is creamy and rich, just as crème brûlée should be, with a crispy golden sugar topping. If you have a sous vide machine, it’s so much easier than baking in a water bath in the oven. 

We discovered crème brûlée, as many people do, in the restaurants of Paris. It became a favorite, the dessert my husband always ordered, if it was on the menu. When we moved on from La Belle France, I had to learn to make it myself. Weren’t nobody serving it in the beautiful backwater that was the little oilfield town of Macaé, Brazil! 

The first time I posted a crème brûlée recipe on my blog, in fact, was for my mother’s birthday back in 2011, the first month of food blogging. My most recent crème brûlée recipe was made with persimmons but you could use your favorite fruit. 

In a word, we LOVE crème brûlée!

Back in the day, I used the broil setting in the oven to caramelize the sugar topping or a spoon heated to scorching over the gas burner but I’ve had a kitchen torch for years and years, just to make this favorite family dessert. My only objection to making creme brûlée is the struggle when I try to remove the baking pan from the oven half filled with water. I tend to slosh. 

Using the sous vide machine and canning jars solves that problem. Unfortunately, it creates another one. Keeping the jars under water. Still, with a couple of weights, sous vide is much easier! I hope you’ll give it a try. 

Sous Vide Creme Brûlée

If you don’t have a vanilla bean, you can substitute 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract. In the case of the latter two, skip the simmering, cooling milk step and just add them to the cold milk. This recipe is adapted from one on The Seaside Baker.

Ingredients

For the custard:

2 1/2 cups or 592g heavy whipping cream

1 vanilla bean pod, split and scraped

6 large egg yolks (98g)

1/2 cup or 100g sugar

tiny pinch salt

To serve:

8 teaspoons sugar

Kitchen torch

Method

Set your sous vide precision cooker to heat the water to 176°F or 80°C.

Wash and dry six 4 oz canning jars with lids. Any shape will do for the custard, but I like using the short, squat ones to give more surface area to caramelize sugar on when the custard has set. 

On medium heat, warm cream, vanilla pod and seeds and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let rest for 15 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk egg yolks, sugar and pinch of salt together until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture no longer feels gritty between your fingertips. It will thicken a little, which is good. 

Remove the vanilla bean pod from the cooled cream.

Add the cream a little at a time to the egg yolk mixture, whisking continually. 

Divide the custard between the six clean jars.

Tighten the lids until they are just closed in order to allow the jars to release air bubbles while cooking. This is called "fingertip tightness," the variable of "closed-ness" achieved by using only your fingertips to screw on the lids. If they start emitting bubbles right when you put them underwater, tighten just a little bit more. 

Carefully place jars in the preheated sous vide container. Since they have air in the headroom of the jar, they’ll want to tip and float. Place weights on top to keep them submerged and straight. I used bricks. 

Cook for 1 hour. My apologies for no photos of this part. Jars in a plastic container, underwater with bricks on top do not photograph well. 

Once done, remove the canning jars from the water and leave to cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Don’t tip the water on top off as this helps keep the seal. 

After cooling, place the jars in a refrigerator for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days.

About 30 minutes before serving, remove them from your refrigerator so they can warm up a bit. 

Just before serving remove the lids and sprinkle about a teaspoon of sugar onto the custard.

Torch the sugar until it has caramelized and serve immediately. 

Enjoy!

It's Multicooker Monday so that means my blogger friends are sharing recipes using their various small cooking devices. Many thanks to our leader Sue of Palatable Pastime and this week's behind the scenes worker bee, Wendy of  Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the other recipe links below. 

• 15 Bean Soup (Instant Pot) by Palatable Pastime
• Air Fryer Chicken Nuggets with Two Dipping Sauces by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Air Fryer Sweet Potato Chips by Sneha's Recipe
• Crockpot Dressing by Veggies First Then Dessert
• Instant Pot Bolognese from Making Miracles
• Instant Pot Navy Bean and Smoked Turkey Soup by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sous Vide Crème Brûlée from Food Lust People Love

Multicooker Monday is a blogger group created by Sue of Palatable Pastime for all of us who need encouragement to make better use of our small appliances like slow cookers, Instant Pots, Air Fryers, rice cookers and sous vide machines. We get together every third Monday of the month to share our recipes. If you are a food blogger who would like to post with us, please request to join our Facebook group. 

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