Rachel's Bacon Gruyere Quiche

Whenever I order quiche in a restaurant I am thoroughly disappointed. It's nothing like my mom's quiche. Mom's quiche is super rich and creamy. Restaurant quiche tends to be well over-cooked and more like tough scrambled eggs. There are a few secrets to making a delicious quiche. One is to use the right ingredients. The recipe below has already been adjusted to what works instead of the original recipe that basically didn't work and ended in a soupy over flowing mess. The second secret is knowing when the quiche is ready to take out of the oven. I've covered that piece in the instructions below.

THIS IS NOT A DIET-FRIENDLY RECIPE. This is more of a "company's coming over for brunch and I want to impress them" recipe. It is the most delicious quiche I've ever had.

Ingredients

• 1 pre-baked pie shell (deep dish, freezer section)
• 6-8 oz. bacon (or your own quiche filling choices - onion, spinach, etc)
• 2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cup milk (original recipe calls for whole milk but 2% works)
• 3/4 cup heavy cream 
• salt and pepper to taste
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 4 oz. Gruyere cheese, grated (about 1 cup). You can use a little more, up to 5 oz if you want. 
• Whatever you do, be sure to use GRUYERE. Even though it's $12/lb or so, it's still cheap if you're feeding 8 people out of that pound.) This recipe will not be nearly as good without the Gruyere cheese.

Adjust oven rack to middle position. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Partially bake pie shell for 15+/- minutes. Here's the best way to make sure the pie shell doesn't bubble up - place aluminum foil over entire pie shell and weight it down with dried beans. (Mom used the same dried beans over and over again.) This step keeps the shell from swelling and blistering.

Cook your fillings - bacon, onion, whatever you've decided to put in. Be sure if you use oil or if bacon is your choice that you let the grease drain on a paper plate covered with paper towels.

Whisk all other ingredients together except for the fillings and the cheese.

Pour part of the whisked mixture into pre-heated pie plate - about 2/3. Put in grated cheese. If cheese "floats" on top of the egg mixture gently pat it down. Put your fillings on (bacon, etc) and they should sink on their own. Pour remaining egg mixture on top.

Bake for 30-34 minutes. The baking part is very important. Too done and it's too tough, not done enough and it's runny. The trick is watching it as it gets close to 30 or so minutes. You want it to be somewhat jiggly in the center (maybe a diameter of 3") but not jiggly anywhere else. Once it's close to done the part of the quiche near the pie shell will puff up a bit.

Once you remove from the oven, the jiggly part will firm up a bit (let it sit for 5-10 minutes) and then you can cut it.