Sous Vide Lemon Curd
Once again my Meyer Lemon tree is going crazy and I have way more lemons than I know what to do with. I made lemon olive oil, Lemoncello batch, salt preserved lemon...and I also wanted to make a batch or 3 of curd. I figured I'll try the MC version this time around and the first thing I noticed is the quantity of butter used. It's a crap ton of butter compared to typical lemon curd recipes. I plowed ahead and gave it a shot anyways.
Egg yolks are cooked SV at 65C. I did not use lemon essential oil and opted to use the extra-fragrant lemon zest.
I also used a total amount of lemon juice equal to the combination of water and citric acid that MC uses. This is something the MC authors in a recent video and email said is fine to do and makes sense to me.
The lemon juice and sugar gets blended with the cooked yolks and then butter, a lot of it (400gr) gets incorporated. After a chill time the curd is ready to eat.
Now, the verdict: It's a good tasting product, but the crazy amount of butter makes it like no other citrus curd I've ever had. I usually expect a stiff custard of sorts, this was more like a lemon curd flavored butter and the texture out of the fridge was more like a cream cheese. No way I would use this to fill a tart or cream puffs, it is just way too rich. I know the recipe has no errata since they just republished it on the MC website and emailed it to their subscribers. So, this is the intended resutl they are shooting for I suppose.
Two questions:
- Is there a reason why the lemon juice, sugar and yolks cannot be mixed together and then bagged and cooked? The last step would be to incorporate the butter. This makes it simpler and more like how a traditional curd is made.
- I am thinking of making it again with half or even less the butter amount. Any thoughts if that would or would not work?