A big welcome to Steve's kitchen. Today it's all about curds, particularly in
this episode it's lemon curds but we will be dealing with some other curds
which we talk about a little bit later on in this episode. Lemon curd is a
favorite of mine, curds without preservatives and additives taste so
good. I mean this is thick, it's lovely and
tart and very simple to make. Wow we're going to get on and make this delicious
lemon curd but we're also going to be talking about the science behind lemon
curds and what other choices we might have. So come on let's get and make it.
We'll start by putting about an inch of water into the bottom of the saucepan
and place that onto a medium heat on the stove. You then want to add 2/3 of a cup
of superfine or castor sugar into a heatproof Bowl. Now we're going to
separate our egg whites and egg yolks. Now one of the best way to separate out
the egg yolks from the whites is just to catch them in your hands and the egg
whites drip through. We're going to add the egg yolks in with our sugar, I'm
going to beat the egg yolks and the sugar together to get a nice thick sweet
cream. Now to get a really zesty lemon curd we want to take the zest off of two
lemons and we're going to take the juice as well. It's going to give us about a
hundred milliliters or about three and a half ounces of lemon juice. Now the more
lemon zest you put into your curd the more citrusy the curd is going to be. So
a subscriber said to me try a spoon rather than a fork to get the juice out.
So I'm going to give that a go, you've got, I haven't got a big serving spoon
with me but I'll use a dessert spoon and yes the juice is coming out beautifully.
Now remarkably these lemons seem to have and no pips in them at all. Now look at
that beautiful lemon juice in there the last thing we're going to put in is 60
grams or 2 ounces of lightly salted butter. Now we take that over to our
stove and our water's just starting to simmer and what I'm going to do is just
gently heat this over the steaming water and this is going to take 5 or 10
minutes and we're going to be looking for
this sauce coating the back of our wooden spoon. Whilst the curd is heating
let's have a little talk about the science behind curd making. By heating
this on a double boiler we get more control over the temperature and we want
to raise the temperature of the curd above 60 degrees Celsius, that's 140
Fahrenheit. Firstly this will pasteurize the eggs which is a good thing, next if
we want the perfect curd we want to take it above 70 degrees Celsius, that's 160
fahrenheit and up to 80 degrees Celsius, that's 175 Fahrenheit. Now I know there's
a lot of figures and you don't need to actually follow these exactly. I'll
explain why in a moment but if you want to get the perfect curd, nothing above 80
degrees Celsius or 175 Fahrenheit, otherwise the eggs will start to cook
and they will split but if you can get that temperature range you'll get a
lovely thick set curd. I don't want you to get too het up about the temperatures,
you can usually tell as the curd starts to come up to temperature, it gets a lot
thicker. You can actually look on the back of the spoon it'll get thick enough
if you run your finger through it there'll be a little line through and
it'll stay there and that's the perfect temperature or the perfect consistency
to make curd. Now think about this we'll be talking about this again after we've
set this curd. Now you do want to continue to stir gently through the curd
as its warming on the stove. Now you can actually see the curd is starting to get
nice and thick now, if I put that on the back of the spoon it's good and thick
and if I run my finger through it it separates and doesn't join, this looks
absolutely perfect and delicious. Now before we let this completely cool down
I'm going to pour the lemon curd into a sterilized jar now. Maybe I should have
measured a slightly smaller jar or made a little more lemon curd but what I can
tell you is this will last for many months sealed in the jar here, once
you've opened it keep in the fridge and this is delicious whether you decide to
have it on sandwiches, add it over some ice cream, put it into some
doughnuts. This is the most delicious non preservative, non-additive lemon curd
you've ever had in your life. Now the process of making lemon curd albeit
fascinating doesn't have to stop there with lemon curds, you'll know there are
lots of other curds out there. You get the passionfruit curds
but can you curd anything? Pretty much, so what I'd love to do now is have a chat
with you about the concept of lemon curds and what you might come up with as
an idea, maybe sort of a chocolate a mint lemon curd or a strawberry lemon curd
actually that's something we might try in a moment, just to sort of try out this
idea but come up with some ideas, share them across with me how would you make a
lemon curd. You might want to go with a blueberry and lavender lemon curd or
take some flavors that you really like, anything really can be turned into
a curd and they are so so good it doesn't have to stop with just lemons.
Even though lemon curd is probably my favorite. So once I've got you here quick
tidy up and let's see if we can make a strawberry curd, which I think could be
quite delicious.
Now this smells delicious, look how thick that strawberry curd has become if I get
it on the back of the spoon you can see if I cut through it,
oops a little bit warm. Wow that tastes good, the strawberry curd has set up
nicely and it tastes really good, it's packed full of that strawberry flavor.
You could almost think of strawberry curd as a strawberry jam or jelly that's
set with eggs rather than with pectin. I also decided to make a blueberry curd
whilst you weren't looking, this one is absolutely delicious as well. I'd love to
get some feedback from you what other curd ideas you can come up with. I
thought of sort of raspberries and white chocolate, you could go with strawberries
and with a little bit of mint in there to change the flavors. Lemon with
elderflower, that would work really well. Comment down below and let me get some
feedback. For me today it's really been about one of my favorites, the lemon curd,
this is so tart, so delicious, we add the butter in there by the way just to add a
sort of mouthfeel of a little bit of oil in there and it really makes it
delicious. You could leave the butter out but trust me it makes it taste a lot
better. So share with some ideas, get across on social media send me some
pictures, tell me about what you've come up with,
I'd love to hear. In the meantime I hope you've enjoyed this look into curds, be
good and I will see you very shortly for some more fun in Steve's kitchen,
take care.