French Quiché Lorraine Recipe is a classic Quiché from my childhood.
My Mama and grandmother always prepared this gorgeous Quiché for lunch or dinner with a little salad.
Learn how to make an easy French Quiché Lorraine from scratch with the dough and crust as well with our family recipe from the Lorraine.
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Classic Quiché Lorraine is part of our French heritage.
Commonly prepared in all French homes, Quiché makes a filling meal for the whole family.
Our Quiché Lorraine is an authentic recipe and I think absolutely the best Quiché Lorraine recipe out there.
📕 What is Quiché Lorraine?
Quiché (pronounced as Keesh in English) are savory open-faced French shortcrust pies, filled and baked with an egg cream (omelette/frittata kind of) mixture.
Occasionally, you have dishes, such as the Onion Tart, which are a kind of Quiché but are known as savory tarts locally. Those are prepared nearly the same way as a conventional Quiché.
The Quiché Lorraine Recipe is the mother of all Quiché, most modern Quiché recipes are often based on this French classic.
🧅 Ingredients
A traditional classic Quiché Lorraine always consists of a pastry, so-called simple shortcrust pastry, and a filling prepared with egg and cream.
These are the following ingredients you will need to make an irresistible easy Quiché Lorraine from scratch.
For the Shortcrust Pie Crust:
- Butter
- All-Purpose Flour
- Salt
- Water
For the Custard Filling:
- Egg
- Milk
- All-Purpose Flour
- Ham or smoked pork belly lard or thick cut bacon
- Cheese
- Black Pepper
- Nutmeg
- fresh Chives to garnish
Ingredients added or removed doesn't make this a Quiché Lorraine but another Quiché variety.
For example, if you add spinach you will have a Quiché Florentine.
If you remove the ham, it won't be a Quiché.
Something like a vegan/vegetarian Quiché Lorraine actually doesn't exist. You would just call it a Quiché by itself because a Quiché Lorraine includes ham/lard.
🥬 Other Quiché varieties:
- Provençal – with Tomatoes
- au fromage - with Cheese only
- au champignion - with Mushrooms
- au saumon - with salmon
… and the sacrilege Quiché variations (the ones which shouldn't be, but they are because people love these quiches)
- au thon - with Tuna
- au asperge - with Asparagus
🔪 How to make it?
Here is a quick overview showing how this recipe comes together. The full recipe can be found further below in the recipe card.
Step 1
Prepare shortcrust pastry. Mix into a smooth dough, which can be rolled out and molded later on. It shouldn't stick.
Wrap into plastic wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for minimum 30 mins.
Step 2
Roll out pastry dough and cut out.
Step 3
Place dough into your buttered tart pan. It should fit to the border. Poke into the dough a few times, and you can place in some pie weights or dried beans so that the pastry won't bulge during the baking period.
Then prebake (called blind baking) the pie crust for about 8 minutes. If you are rushing, skip that and pour filling and then bake.
Step 4
Combine and whisk together all the custard filling ingredients.
Step 5
Pour filling into prebaked pie crust in the mold. Sprinkle grated cheese over that.
Bake for about 25 minutes until done. If you didn't prebake, add 8 minutes more to your baking.
🍴 Serving
We always serve a French Quiché Lorraine with some kind of salad.
Because the Quiché Lorraine is a typical summer meal, we tend to harvest green beans and various salads from the garden.
That means light salads are served with Quiché Lorraine.
You can serve any of the following salads with this easy Quiché Lorraine recipe:
- Simple green salad (lettuce, iceberg, rocket, romaine) or sliced fresh tomato with a French mustard vinaigrette or herbal dressing
- Radish Broccoli Salad
- Radish Salad
- french/green bean salad with vinaigrette
- tuna asparagus salad
- Carrot Salad
- Coleslaw
- Beet Salad
Or serve with a light vegetable side dish such as roasted carrots, green beans with a dollop of melted butter.
🧀 What Cheese for Quiché Lorraine?
The authentic Quiché Lorraine recipe doesn't include any cheese; however, most people make it with cheese all over France.
A ham Quiché Lorraine with cheese just tastes all the better because the cheese makes a crust over the Quiché, but of course, again to clarify it, the real Quiché Lorraine is without cheese.
Pick a milder/semi-sharp tasting cheese that melts well with a normal fat amount.
You can use one of the following cheese variations:
- Emmental
- Comté
- Gruyère (mild version)
- Cheddar (mild version)
💭 FAQs
No. Eggs are the main ingredient in a Quiché Lorraine.
Yes, although it's not commonly done at all. You would be better off making a fresh one. If you must freeze, place the baked and cooled down Quiché as a whole into some kind of aluminum tray and cover with aluminum. Place into the freezer and freeze for up to max 2 months. I would not suggest freezing a raw whole Quiché. Instead, prepare the dough, refrigerate as you would normally and roll out. Then just roll the dough between butter paper and freeze that way. This is your best option.
Quiché Lorraine is too heavy to be a breakfast or brunch meal, and it sounds wrong from a French perspective. But it's related to the frittata, so you are free to do what your heart aches for. Enjoy your quick for breakfast or brunch if you like it this way.
The name of this particular Quiché indicates that the Quiché Lorraine is a regional specialty from the Lorraine in France. The Lorraine is in the northeast of France bordering Alsace and the famous champagne regions, besides the countries Luxembourg and Germany. Lorraine and Alsace were frequently awhile part of the German Empire in the past and so the name Quiché originated from the German word Kuchen (meaning cake). The original name for Quiché in the Lorraine is féouse. In the rest of France, Quiché is the name given to this dish.
🥣Tools to make Quiché
- Tart/Quiche Pan in Porcelain. You can directly serve the Quiché in that as seen in the pictures.
- Silicon Pastry Baking Mat comes with the diameters to cut the shape
- Stand Mixer if you want to avoid making the dough manually
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📖 Recipe
French Quiche Lorraine Recipe
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry:
- 7 ounces All Purpose Flour
- 3.5 ounces Butter
- pinch Salt
- 2-5 Tablespoons Water Quantity depends on how thirsty your dough is
For the filling:
- 4 Eggs
- 1 cup Milk
- 1 Tablespoon All-purpose Flour
- ⅔ cup Smoked Ham or lard/bacon
- ½ Teaspoon Salt Optional, only if you didn't use smoked ham/lard/bacon. See notes.
- ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper
- pinch Nutmeg
- 2 Tablespoon Chives chopped
- 2 Tablespoon Cheese Grated Gruyère or Comte or Emmental or mild Cheddar Cheese
Instructions
Pie Crust
- To make the Shortcrust, place the butter into a mixing bowl and add the flour and salt.7 ounces All Purpose Flour, 3.5 ounces Butter, pinch Salt
- With your hand mix the content and add water gradually to the butter-flour mixture. Work the dough out and make a smooth non-sticky dough.2-5 Tablespoons Water
- Wrap into plastic wrap and keep to rest in your fridge for about 30 to 60 mins. A harder, cooled dough is easier to roll out.
- Dust your working space. Roll it out to about 0.1 inch (2.54 mm) thickness.
- Place the tart mold over the dough, add 0.8 inch (ca. 2 cm) radius around the tart pan and cut out the dough into a round shape.
- Preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit (ca. 200 °C)!
- Butter the tart pan and place and fit in the cut-out dough carefully into the tart pan.
- Poke with a fork randomly a few times into the dough. That will prevent the crust to deform and bulge while baking. Eventually, you may want to add pie weights or dried beans into the tart pan so that the pie crust doesn't bulge. Blind bake (pre-baking) your dough for about 8 minutes. *See Notes
Quiché Custard Filling
- In a mixing bowl add the eggs, milk, and flour and combine the ingredients by whisking with a fork shortly until the mixture appears slightly beige or light colored.4 Eggs, 1 cup Milk, 1 Tablespoon All-purpose Flour
- Then add the ham, (eventually salt) black pepper, nutmeg and chopped chives and mix once again.⅔ cup Smoked Ham, ½ Teaspoon Salt, ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper, pinch Nutmeg, 2 Tablespoon Chives
- Pour the custard egg mixture into the pre cooked shortcrust tart shell. Top evenly with the grated cheese.2 Tablespoon Cheese
- Bake for about 25 minutes at 400 Fahrenheit (ca. 204 °C) or until golden.
- Once baked, leave out a bit to cool and cut into slices.
Notes
- Your butter shouldn't be too soft. It's better if it crumbles/blends into the flour because, especially if you work with your hands which are warm and soften the butter.
- You can use salted butter for the shortcrust pastry but then skip adding salt to the dough preparation.
- Add 1-2 Tablespoon Water. You need to adjust and use your judgment! A humid climate might need a little less water and a dry climate more. It also depends on the flour quality.a little too much water can make it soggy, in that case, add a minimal amount of flour to balance it out again.
- The dough must rest in the fridge so that it's hard and cold, that way you can roll the dough out.
- Try to use smoked ham or lard for this Quiché Lorraine. Smoked lard or bacon is salted enough, and therefore you wouldn't need to add any salt to the Quiché filling.
- You can choose to skip the blind baking of the dough by pouring the filling over the raw dough. We do that when we are rushing, but the dough tends to be a bit undercooked or let's say less dry. If you pick that method, then add the 8 minutes to the cooking time of the Quiché. In total, the Quiché needs to cook 8 mins + 25 mins, or until golden.
- The Quiché makes 8 servings/slices. That makes usually 2 slices per Person in Europe.
- The authentic Quiché is without cheese. You can make this Quiché Lorraine without cheese.
