The way to have quiche on Christmas morning without cooking at dawn is to do everything except the bake on Christmas Eve. Blind-bake the crust, cook the bacon, chop and cook the vegetables, grate the cheese and whisk the custard, then store each part covered in the refrigerator. In the morning, fill the crust, pour in the custard and bake until the center reads 160°F, 40 to 50 minutes. The morning work takes about five minutes.

Quiche is a French tart: a pastry case filled with a savory custard of eggs with milk, cream or both. It can be served hot, warm or cold, which suits a morning when nobody sits down on time.

The plan

The night before, about 45 minutes of work:

  1. Blind-bake the crust.
  2. Cook the bacon and the onion.
  3. Wilt and squeeze the spinach.
  4. Grate the cheese.
  5. Whisk the custard.

The morning, about five minutes of work and 40 to 50 of waiting: heat the oven, fill, pour, bake, rest.

The ingredients

For one 9-inch quiche, six to eight servings:

  • 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust, homemade or store-bought, in a pie plate
  • 6 slices thick-cut bacon
  • 1 medium yellow onion
  • 5 ounces fresh spinach
  • 4 ounces Gruyère or Swiss cheese (about 1 cup grated)
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1½ cups half-and-half
  • ½ teaspoon salt, a few grinds of black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg

Quiche Lorraine, a well-known version, is made with bacon; the traditional Lorraine recipe has no cheese. The version here adds spinach and Gruyère. Swap freely: ham, mushrooms, leeks or roasted peppers all work, cooked and cooled the same way.

Blind-bake the crust

Baking the empty crust first keeps the bottom from turning soggy under the wet custard. This is the step most worth doing the night before.

Heat the oven to 375°F. Chill the crust in its plate for 15 minutes, prick the bottom with a fork, line it with parchment and fill it with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for about 20 minutes, lift out the parchment and weights, and bake for another 10 minutes, until the bottom looks dry and pale gold. Cool it completely, cover it loosely, and leave it at room temperature overnight.

The board work

Do the cutting in an order that keeps raw meat away from everything else. Vegetables first, then cheese, then the bacon last.

Dice the onion. Halve it through the root, peel, and cut it into a small dice, about ¼ inch.

Chop the spinach. Wilt it in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring, for two or three minutes. Let it cool, then squeeze it hard in a clean towel until no more liquid comes out. Chop the squeezed ball coarsely on the board.

Grate the cheese. Grate the Gruyère on the coarse side of a box grater.

Cut the bacon. Stack the slices and cut them crosswise into strips about ½ inch wide. Raw bacon is raw meat. The FDA advises one cutting board for produce and a separate one for raw meat, so use a second board, or wash this one in hot soapy water before anything else touches it. The method is in how to cut bacon into lardons.

A WONAMU. bamboo cutting board is 12 × 9 inches, enough to hold the onion, the spinach and the cheese in separate piles before they go into containers.

Cook, cool, store

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crisp, about eight minutes. Lift it onto paper towels. Pour off all but a tablespoon of fat and cook the onion in it until soft and golden, about ten minutes.

Let everything cool, then refrigerate each filling in its own covered container: bacon, onion, spinach, cheese. Cooked food goes into the refrigerator within two hours, and the refrigerator should be at 40°F or below.

Whisk the eggs, half-and-half, salt, pepper and nutmeg in a bowl or a large measuring jug. Cover it and refrigerate it overnight too.

Keep the parts separate until the morning. The crust waits at room temperature, the fillings and custard in the cold.

Christmas morning

  1. Heat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the lower third.
  2. Set the crust on a sheet pan. Scatter the bacon, onion and spinach over the bottom and top with the cheese.
  3. Whisk the custard again and pour it over the filling, stopping about ¼ inch below the rim.
  4. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the edges are set and puffed and the center has only a slight wobble.

Check with a thermometer in the center. Egg dishes and casseroles should reach 160°F, according to the FDA. If the crust edge browns before the center is done, cover the rim loosely with foil.

Let the quiche rest for 15 to 20 minutes before slicing. Cut it in the pie plate with a sharp knife, wiping the blade between cuts; how to cut pie into even slices shows how to mark six or eight equal pieces.

Baking it fully the night before

For an even easier morning, bake the whole quiche on Christmas Eve. Cool it, cover it and refrigerate it. In the morning, reheat it in a 325°F oven, covered with foil, until the center reaches 165°F, the FDA’s figure for reheating cooked egg dishes.

Serving and leftovers

Serve it warm or at room temperature, but bring it back to the refrigerator within two hours, or one hour if the room is above 90°F. Leftover cooked egg dishes keep in the refrigerator for three to four days, according to the FDA. A wedge sits well on the Christmas morning breakfast board.

The short version

On Christmas Eve, blind-bake the crust and let it cool. Dice the onion, wilt and squeeze the spinach, grate the cheese, then cut the bacon last on a separate or freshly washed board. Cook, cool and refrigerate each filling, and whisk the custard into its own covered jug.

On Christmas morning, fill the crust, pour, and bake at 350°F until the center reaches 160°F. Rest it for 15 minutes, slice, and keep the leftovers cold.

❋

WONAMU. makes a bamboo cutting board designed for daily prep, 12 × 9 inches, bamboo, with a perimeter juice groove. Available on Amazon.

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