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Avoiding Soufflé Meltdowns

We developed a new approach for keeping soufflé spillovers at bay during cooking, eliminating the need for a parchment collar.

Soufflé recipes traditionally require attaching a greased parchment collar around the lip of the soufflé dish. Extending the collar several inches above the dish keeps the soufflé contained so that it rises up rather than spills over. But we found that the old-fashioned approach isn’t necessary. The key is giving the fluid batter enough room to set up before it rises above the dish’s lip. It takes about 20 minutes for the batter to reach the rim, at which point it’s set and will continue to rise up, rather than spill over. In our Cheese Soufflé recipe (see related content), we call for leaving an inch of space between the top of the batter and the rim of the dish. Because soufflé dishes vary a bit in capacity, you may not need all the batter in our recipe, so discard any left over after filling your dish to the proper level.

SHOOT FOR BELOW THE RIM

Leaving 1 inch of space between the batter and the rim gives the batter room to set.

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