Being Filipino, I love leche flan, just ask one of my Aunts. It's actually pretty easy and only involves 3 or 4 ingredients (if you want to keep it basic). I've learned how to make it a few years ago, starting with the traditional method of using a water bath (bain marie) in an oven. Over the years, I've tried different recipes and methods, like using an Instant Pot and Sous Vide. Out of all the methods, I prefer the sous vide method. It gives the leche flan and extremely smooth and custardy texture. The Instand Pot method is a close second but sous vide consistently give the best texture.
For those of you who don't know what sous vide is, it is a French cooking technique where you vacuum-seal food and cook in a temperature controlled water bath. It works extremely well with meats and roasts since you can control the doneness of the meat. It will give you end to end pink for medium rare steaks, with no grey ring. I live and breath by sous vide and I forgotten how to grill a steak in a conventional way.
There are other uses for sous vide besides steaks, and this is one way. The downside is that you will have use separate mason jars as you probably can cook it in one large pan. The good thing is that you and portion off the flan.
So, about a week and a half before my vacation, I happened to be at Costco and saw that a pack of 24 eggs was like $3.99. As you know in the past few months, egg prices were insane so I had to impulse buy this. But it turned out I was not burning through the eggs fast enough and I didn't want to have eggs site around for another couple of weeks while I was on vacation. So what better way to burn through some eggs than making Leche Flan.
Gotta use up all these eggs
So the recipe I used was just a culmination of several other recipes.
Here is the ingredients list:
Caramel:
1/2 sugar
Flan:
3/4 cup sugar
12 egg yolks
1 can evaporated milk (12 or 13 oz)
1 can condensed milk (12 or 13oz)
1 can coconut milk (I added this to recipe)
2 tsp vanilla extract (add this to recipe)
For containers, I used 12 mason jars used for canning for jams and preserves. They need to have a tight-fitting as it will be submerged in water for at least 2 hours.
Some recipes add in the egg whites. I chose just using the yolks as it gives a more smoother texture. Adding whites gives it a more firm texture. Not my thing.
Slowly heat about 1/2 cup of sugar under medium heat to make the caramel sauce. I actually used more and it worked against me but I would start with 1/2. Keep an eye on this and don't get distracted as you can burn the sugar. It should turn into nice dark brown caramel color
2. Pour the caramel sauce evenly among the 12 mason jars. You don't need a thick layer. I melted too much sugar and accumulate in the jar after serving the flan and made it hard to clean
3. Combine the sugar, eggs, vanilla, condensed and evaporated milk and mix well. You may want to strain the mixture to get some remaining egg white bit out of the mixture.
4. Pour flan in jars and seal.
5. Cook in sous vide water bath at 180 degrees F for about 2.5 hours.
6. Chill overnight.
The next day, you will be rewarded with a sweet, custardy circle of joy.
Marvel at the custard-ness
The good thing was that I used up most of my eggs and had enough left over for breakfast for the next few days before my vacation
The problem was that the next day, while making breakfast, I had an accident involving one of the eggs
Now I was down to one egg with about 3 days until vacation. I was contemplating going out to the store and getting more eggs
Oh well...
Anyway, try the sous vide method. And try not to eat too many jars at once, you chonky bastard