Lemon Curd

Okay, let's admit it: curd is not the best sounding word in the world, on its face. There are too many unsavory words that also end in -urd. Still, with the magic of curd being, quite simply, awesome, it transforms it from being something terrible to something well worth eating. And that's if we completely ignore cheese curds, which are a different things, altogether*.

Lemon curd is a custard, but it's a really easy custard to make. There's no fiddling with bain maries or anything kooky like that. Although the ingredients are a little different, it's effectively the same procedure as pudding. But lemon curd is so much more rich than pudding. If you eat curd by itself, it'll be in small quantities. It makes a great accent to other foods as well.

We start with some lemons, four large eggs, 7 ounces of butter, and 1 1/3 cups of sugar. The equipment is a two-quart saucepan, a zester, some sort of lemon juice squeezing device, a fine-mesh sieve, and something with which to stir, such as a whisk.

Incidentally, does that butter look a little strange to you? That's because it's my From Scratch butter from last week. Yes, that's right, I was making curd as an ingredient for a party, and I accidentally made exactly enough butter for curd. So I figured, why not go that extra step and use the homemade butter in the curd? Everyone was very impressed. And I got a new fan at the party (Hi, Joncey), so in just a few million more parties, I should be at least as popular as Rachel Ray. Especially if Oprah is at one of this parties.

First, let's deal with the lemons. You need one cup of lemon juice, which took me 3.5 lemons this time around. I ended up using the zest from 3 of those lemons. Officially, you're looking for something close to two tablespoons of lemon zest, but don't go crazy on this. Whenever I make it, I just zest all of the lemons that I need in order to get to one cup of juice. The zest is just adding flavor, not acidity nor structure, so you have a lot of leeway in how much you add.

Crack your eggs (which didn't require an extra step, but I took the picture, so figured I might as well do something with it). You may have made curd before where you had to just use the yolks. Pah. This is fantastic curd, and so much easier than fiddling with yolk separation. The only consequence comes from if you don't thoroughly mix the yolks and the whites before cooking, but that gets handled at the end, so not a big deal.

Now add everything to your saucepan except for the butter. Mix it thoroughly, add the butter, and then turn the heat on to medium high. Stir continuously until the mixture starts to bubble. If you don't think you have the attention to stir continuously, you can cook at a lower heat; it'll just take longer. You should also be able to see a trail from your whisk in the curd itself at this point. If it bubbles but you don't see a trail, then all will be well, but your curd will be a bit thin. If you want to let it go a bit more until it thickens up, you'll have a thicker curd, naturally. After it's all cooked, strain it through your fine-meshed sieve, which will do two things. First, it gets the lemon zest out of the curd, which doesn't bother some people, but traditionally curd is smooth. Second, if you failed to thoroughly mix your eggs, it removes any bits of cooked egg white from the curd, which nobody really likes.

You will end up with nearly three cups of curd.

Long-time readers may notice that I use those canning jars a lot. And I do. They are very handy for these little ingredients, and except for the center lids, are completely reusable. Which is why I tend to use plastic wrap and the outer lids to handle the covering. The curd will last a couple of weeks, presuming you don't eat it all first.

What do you use it for? My favorite way to eat curd is to take a spoon, pull some curd from the jar, and eat it slowly. For the party mentioned above, Melanie made a parfait of sweetened nonfat greek yogurt, fresh berries (blue- and black-), and some curd in the center. It was divine. You could make some shortbread cookies with a little space on top to hold the curd, you can put it on toast or muffins, you could use it in a tart shell. If you thicken it enough, you could even turn it into an unbelievably rich lemon pie, but I really recommend small applications.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients

Enough lemons for 1 cup of juice (roughly 3-4 lemons)

Zest from the lemons (at least 2 tablespoons)

1 1/3 cup sugar

7 ounces (1 3/4 sticks) butter, cut into chunks

4 eggs, large

Directions

Thoroughly mix all ingredients except butter in saucepan.

Add butter to saucepan.

Heat over medium-high heat, stirring constantly.

After mixture starts to bubble, remove from heat.

Strain.

*"Which are different things." Hmm. That works better in an audio/visual medium.

Comments

[gail]

Love Lemon curd, and it really isn't intimidating to make. Lemon bars are also a great use for the curd.