How to make creamy savory French crepes like in France : Ham cheese & mushroom filling (vegetarian)

Welcome back everyone to the channel. This is the French Cooking Academy. My name is Stéphane. If you are new subscribers or new followers or new to the channel, welcome. If you are one of the regulars, welcome as well. As you can see here, look what I've got. The crepe pan. That means there's something crepey in the air. That's right, because many of you have been requesting to see if I had a savory crepe recipe in store. And I thought it was the perfect time to unleash the most super duper ultra well-known snack recipe called in France, crepe jambon fromage et champignon. Now if you're a French person, you hear this, you're going to go like, wow, are we doing this? Yes, we are. It is so well known. In English, it's just translated savory crepes that are filled with ham, cheese, and or mushroom. A very simple recipe based on crepes filled with a creamy béchamel flavor with the ingredients of ham, cheese, and mushroom. Doesn't sound anything special, but in France, this is such a well-known recipe that has been around for more than 30 years and hasn't changed since. And I would say that at least 70% of French people must know and have eaten this. It is that well known. But what exactly is the secret of these little snacks? 30 years? Well, let's find out together just after that. Wow. Now 30 years you did here, right? Now what on earth is going on with this thing? I mean, I'm born almost knowing these savory crepes, right? Ham and cheese and mushroom crepes. And I've grown up with them. And even today, last time I went in France, they're still there. Unchanged recipe. So what exactly is the secret behind these crepes? Why are they so famous? Well, the big secret is actually that these crepes have not been made famous because of restaurants, but because of supermarkets. And this is a very interesting story. And that's right. These crepes are actually bought in the frozen department in the supermarket stores in France. And they have been since years and years and years. They become such an institution that when you go there, you expect to see them in a special area. Oh, there they are, the crepes. And I think the reason of their success is that, first of all, yes, they're good. They're very small and snackish, so you can snack on them. But most important, because they are frozen, you buy them in box of like 20 up to 40 pieces and you have them in the fridge ready. And whenever you feel like snacking or having a little starter, you take one or two or three or six out of there and up in the pan and boom, you've got these delicious little crepes. And they are just so good that today I wanted to try to recreate the magic behind these crepes. So what are we going to do? We're going to make a fresh batter, a savory batter, and then we're going to make our special creamy béchamel, flavor it with the ingredients. We're going to fill the crepes, fold them, and instead of eating them, we're going to freeze them first and recreate the experience of the ham and cheese mushroom crepes from France. Let's go! All right, so let's try to recreate these famous crepes jambon fromage from France. First, the ingredients, they will be listed in the video description or you have a link to the website. But in a nutshell, all what we're going to use, of course, the ham, the cheese, and this is Gruyère cheese from Switzerland, the mushrooms like we talked about, and this is to make the batter. So we've got some milk, the flour, the eggs, there will be some butter, there will be some salt, and this is also double cream that we're going to use for our special creamy sauce. So the utensil is very simple, the bowl and the whisk, the sieve, the spatula, and the crepe pan, very important. Now, when you make a recipe, by default, you always have to start by the one thing that takes longest. In this instance, because we have to make the crepes and there is a resting time of one hour, it is the one thing you need to concentrate on first. So before even doing the mise en place, because we have plenty of off time, we're going to make the batter and the crepes. So very simple, this one, you take your bowl, and I'm just going to pass all of the flour at once with that sieve so that we have a nice and fine flour. There we have it. Now, I'm going to take the whisk and we make that little well. Once we've got our well, we're going to add one, it's five grams, so one teaspoon of salt. This is part of the dry product. I can mix it a little bit. And straight after that, we're going to add the eggs. Now, today I've beaten the eggs like this because some people say it is better that way. So let's make peace with everyone. And the most important, as always, is to start with your eggs like that and don't mix all of this. This is the key to not having clumps. Don't mix all of the flour at once. So be gentle, you turn with your whisk like this, and you incorporate the flour little bit by little bit until you get some kind of paste in the middle before we add the milk in. So when you're roughly at this stage, this is when you're going to start to incorporate your milk. And very slowly, put a little bit of milk and you're going to do the same. It's all about being very gentle and just take your time. So a bit of milk, like a mayonnaise, you don't put everything. And that's to make sure you're going to grab everything, all these clumps and turn them and it's going to incorporate. See how liquid it becomes? It's very easy. Don't buy crepe batter in a packet. I'm doing this almost real time and look at it. I'm almost done. So you keep on going like that until everything is incorporated. All right, hold on. So what I'm doing for the last bit, I will just go around the edges like this because if I turn, you can see there's still some tiny little clumps. You see there? So there's always a little clump and this is what's going to be dissolving after the resting time. But let's have a look. Pretty much, look at that. That's just my first go. There's some tiny clumps, but if you want after that, when it's done, if you still have clumps, you can always pass it through a sieve to make sure you got something very clean. And that's the batter done. So this is how easy it is to make a crepe batter. So I'm going to leave this to rest for one hour as always, and I'm going to start preparing the rest. All right, so now that the batter is resting, we've got one hour in front of us, and we can make the mise en place. I've kind of started a little bit here to show you what needs to be done. And in this mise en place, there's a lot of chopping that needs to take place. Now we have to make a bechamel. So as always, we need that kind of diffuser with the onions. A lot of times people ask me, what are these black things on top? These are cloves. So you just have half an onion and I'm just basically putting them like that. And that's just to not having to fish them out in the bechamel after. It looks a bit like a hedgehog when there's more. I tend to call that the hedgehog. So that's ready, and you can put this on the side. Now for the chopping, today I wanted to talk about the use of these, which are electrical apparatus in the kitchen. Now people tend to think that because it's French cooking, you have to use a knife all the time. But trust me, in some recipes, even in France, if you think that the chefs or the cooks always use their knife, that's a misconception. If you can use, you know, a little aid in terms of something like this, a little hand mixer to make things, there's nothing wrong. It's not changing your recipes. I just want to say today and show you that yes, you can use those things. So we have to chop some mushrooms, we have to chop some parsley, we have to chop some ham, and we need to chop onions and shallots and all these things. It's a lot of chopping. So if you can avoid that, well, you can use one of those things. So for instance, the ham, because it's a kind of a blended sauce, I'm just going to put a few pieces in there. I could do it by the knife if you want. If you don't have a food processor mostly, that's what you want to do. But if you have one of those things, you know, I'm putting this in there. Done. Now I don't want to brag, but this took me basically one second. And if I would have chopped this by hand, and look at the result. This is how thin and regular our mix is. And this is what we want. Remember, it's a supermarket kind of industrial thing. So we're trying to recreate the thing. Let me clean this and we'll chop the rest. All done. The mise en place is ready. The mushrooms are cut. We're going to go straight for the stove and start the duxelles. And a quick recap to make the duxelles, the champignons, or duxelles of mushroom, you start with a pan, medium heat, and you're going to melt all of the butter first. As soon as the butter is foaming, take your mix of shallots and onion, put them in, and you're going to cook them or let them sweat for a minute or two on a gentle heat, medium to medium low. Next, you take all of the mushrooms and put them in. Mix well with the shallots and the onions. Next, a little bit of lemon juice. So that's what I'm doing with this. Not too much, just to avoid that the mushrooms are getting too black. So again, you mix well. And we're going to add a little bit of salt and pepper. Salt and a grind of pepper. Okay, so as soon as the water comes out of the mushrooms like this, you can reduce your heat again to low. And this is the natural water contained in a mushroom. The goal of the exercise for duxelles, this is called a duxelles sèche, meaning a dry duxelles. So we're going to have to wait until all of the water evaporates, and we're just going to be left with that kind of semi-dry paste or concentrated paste of mushroom. And that is the perfect kind of garnish you can use for all kinds of sauce or stuffing or anything like that, and that will give great flavor to your dishes. All right, my duxelles are ready. Now, how do you know when it's ready? Basically, when you mix like this at the bottom, you see it starts to attach. It means there's really not much liquid left. This is where you're ready to put the parsley in. Now, parsley, and we're just going to put a little bit, like maybe a teaspoon or a heaped teaspoon in there and see how it goes. Always go very slow with the parsley. Okay, we're going to turn the heat off. I think that's done. And so the parsley, it's up to you. If you want much, for instance, you look, you can see there is some green, but I mean, for me, you know, the balance would be maybe, so I would say I've put like, what, two teaspoons of parsley, but that's a personal choice. Parsley for the duxelles, it's really a personal choice. So this is the result. This is what I've got. And this is the duxelles how it looks like. Duxelles sèche. Our duxelles is now ready, and we can now start making the roux for the béchamel. So I'm going to do another recap again today on the béchamel making. You start on the medium or let's say low, low heat to start with. And you're going to melt your butter. Now, while the butter is melting, let me explain again if you're new to the channel. So the béchamel is made out of a mix of flour and butter called the roux. And this is what we're making now. And it is then mixed with milk to create the béchamel, that's called in English, the white sauce. The amount of roux and the amount of milk you use will create different aspects of your béchamel. So you can have a thin béchamel for a certain sauce. It can be used sometime even for soups. And sometimes you need a thick one. Today, we're going to make a version that is the thick béchamel that we're going to be using for our crepes. So you start by melting all of the butter in the pan. And as soon as it's melted, we're going to add our flour in. Equal amount of butter and flour. Today, we use 40 grams of flour and 40 grams of butter. As soon as the butter is melted, you put all of the flour in. Keep it on low heat. You can put your heat on very low because you don't want to color that roux. It has to be white. If you do a béchamel sauce, which is a white sauce, the roux has to be white. You can color the roux for certain sauce that requires a brownish color. And this is not the case here. Once the flour is in, you have to cook the roux from 1 to 3 minutes maximum. That's again to keep that whitish color. So you're going to do this. And after a maximum of 3 minutes, best is like 2 minutes. And then we're just going to turn it off totally to avoid any coloring. Once the heat is off, this is the end result that you get. This is what we called in French cooking a roux blanc, a white roux. So you're going to reserve that pan on the side. You're going to leave that roux to cool down completely. And by now, your crepe batter should be ready. And it's time to make the crepes. All right. So for the crepe, I've got a video on this. I'm going to do a small recap. Plenty of oil to start with on your pan. Make sure the pan is very hot. And you take a thin layer. It must only cover the bottom of your pan. So not like a thick layer. Crepes have to be really, really, really thin. And this is no exception for these savory crepes. That's it. I'm just showing you one crepe. And you can refer to the other video if you want to have the full explanation. So only a few seconds, as you can see already. It's got a really nice color. And we're going to cook it again afterwards. So for that preparation, honestly, just a few seconds on one side, a few seconds on the other side, and we are done. All right. Let's have a look. You can see a little color on the other side. That's it. I'm going to flip my crepe and I'm going to put it on the side. I'm done. My crepes are done. This is the result. Just showing you very quickly. There's plenty. They're thin, as you can see. Look, that's very important. And there's one side that's not too cooked. We're going to put the filling. And the other side, that's a bit more cooked, as you can see. That's what we need to have. And now let's make the béchamel sauce. First, we need to warm up our milk. I swear to God, I've got the smell of the crepes next to me. I've just made. It's beautiful. It's really hard to concentrate. So we're going to warm up the milk first because we want to give it a little bit of taste. So I'm going to put my onion with the cloves in just to let it infuse a little bit. One bay leaf and just a little bit of salt. Usually you can put pepper and nutmeg and cayenne pepper. But today I want to make it child friendly. So we're going to minimize the amount of spices in. So we're going to gently bring this to a light boil, like a simmer, let's say. OK, so my milk now is nice and smoky. It's almost simmering. That's enough. I'm going to turn my heat off and we're going to start to make the béchamel. The heat is off. And what you're going to do, you're going to take all of the warm milk, filter it with a sieve, pour it over and basically you're going to start whisking to incorporate the roux with the milk before we put the heat back on. As soon as this is done, we're going to put the heat, which I've done just now, on low to medium and very slowly that is going to transform into a béchamel, which means a very thick sauce. So you keep on whisking very gently and we'll see just in a minute or so what's going to happen. About one or two minutes later, look at that. This is how thick that sauce has become. And this is basically your béchamel that is done. And this is the first building block in French cooking when you mix milk with a roux. All right, so it starts bubbling away. We can put our heat on very low and now we need to transform this into something else, which is called a sauce crème, something we haven't done before. And the sauce crème is a béchamel, so what you have in front of you now. It's a very thick one and that's going to be enriched with a little bit of crème. So in America it's called heavy whipping crème and it's called double crème here. It's basically full fat crème with 35% fat. It's a liquid type of crème. So I've got the crème here and I'm just going to very slowly, we don't want it too liquid, so I'm going to add the crème little bit by little bit. There's 200 milliliters maximum we should add, but what I'm going to do is to really go very gently because I want to keep that béchamel quite thick. And so I don't think I'm going to use 200 milliliters. Okay, so I've added basically 100 milliliters, 10 centiliters of crème because I want to keep this very thick because we're doing that kind of supermarket version and it needs to stick in this crepe. It must not be liquid. So when you're done here, I'm going to add here about 40 grams, 30 to 40 grams of cheese. That depends on you and that's a gruyère cheese, very salty. This is why I didn't add much salt to start with. And that is going to be basically our base for our crepes. This is the most important, a sauce crème with cheese. Okay, so from here I'm doing a bit of an experiment because I'm doing the ham and mushroom one. So I'm going to divide that in two. On one hand, I'm going to have a bit of the béchamel on one bowl. That's going to be the mushroom one, let's say, and this is going to be the ham one. There we go. All right, so keep in mind that I am doing both versions. You don't have to do the duxelles if you don't want to, or the ham, or both. So I've got too much duxelles here. So what I'm going to do just to show you what happened, when you have your base mix, you're going to blend it with whatever you like. Either mushroom or ham, or both. And it is just a matter of having these mushrooms through that sauce crème, which is called a cream sauce, this enriched béchamel. Okay, so that's for instance one option. And you can have it like that. But if you want more, let's say, if you want more mushrooms, feel free to absolutely, you know, that's going to pack a punch. That's going to be really, really mushroomy. Okay, now the final thing you have to do always is to taste your preparation. You see how thick that was going to be? That's going to be perfect for the crepes. So I'm going to take a little bit and try it out. You know what? The duxelles is such a secret weapon when it comes to like something mushroomy, because it gives such a beautiful mushroomy taste. Perfect, it's kind of sweet and really the cream has a sweetness, so it's not like salty or aggressive. It's smooth on the palate. And now the second contestant brings forth the ham. Oh yeah, this is my favorite. Look at this. I'm going to put a little bit of ham, well actually quite a lot, and mix that. Oh, look at this. Now look at that. I'm going to put more. I just love ham. Let's charge it up, people. That's going to be ham and cheese. Oh yeah, look at that. That's my favorite. Let's taste it. Honestly, that is really close to the thing I'm used to in France. That kind of smokiness of the ham with the gruyere cheese in the background. A little bit creamy. Add a crepe with this, and I think the bells from heaven are going to ring. Now I'll mix already. I've got the crepe. The final step is folding. Now who's good at folding? Because I am not. And we have to get some kind of rectangle out of that. So pardon me if it's not great. So we take some of our lovely mix. So you don't want too much. I don't know. I'm not too sure how much I should put in, but I think you know something like that. And you don't want to overdo it. And I think if we do like something like that, all right, then maybe about like this. And then I guess we can... Is that a rectangle? That's not a rectangle. And maybe fold that one there. That's a parcel. That's what I get in a post. Well, that's one. All right, the ham is done. What about... I've got a new idea. Because what if we do like a spread, and then we roll it like a cigar? So what about something like that? Cigarillos. Well, that looks pretty good. Look, nothing. You know what? That's even better. I'm gonna do this for the mushroom ones. I am done with the best of my abilities, which is not too much. I've tried to make this. So these are the mushroom ones. I kind of prefer the other kind of cigarillos, other kind of flat things. And these ones, the parcels, that's going to be the ham and cheese. So ham and cheese and this vegetarian savory crepe with a blend of ducks and of mushroom and sauce creme, which is the creamy béchamel. So I'm going to cover this with a film, put them in the freezer like it is in the shop, and it's only by tomorrow that I'm going to actually cook them or warm them up and serve them. So we can see the full extent of that little challenge. Ladies and gentlemen, 24 hours have passed and my crepes are totally frozen. And this is what I mean with this one. What you get in France, they're actually smaller in France, about half the size, they're not full-size crepes. But the thing is, you can prepare these weeks in advance. Once they're frozen, like now, I'm quite hungry and I'm just going to choose like one mushroom one. And you know, I'm going to take a little parcel, ham and cheese and a mushroom. I'm going to take a pan, warm this up and see how they look like once they're cooked. So let's go. Now to warm up the crepes, very easy. You put a nudge of butter, you put your crepes and you see the size of the crepe is already a problem. In France, they're much smaller. So that's first hurdle I can see in that recipe that I've made. Try to recreate the snack, the size. Let's see. We're going to put this on a very low heat, about five minutes on each side, very low heat. Okay. The first five minutes. And what we want to see is that, oh, they're getting so, that's what I want to see. You see, the crepes becomes a little bit toasted like this, you know, and you get that kind of crunchiness, which really then doesn't exactly feel like a crepe. It's more that different kind of texture, the crispiness, then blended with the filling inside. Another five minutes on that side and they should be ready. Oh my goodness, I think they are done. And I didn't eat anything and I'm starving. Let's put this in a place, get them open. All right, guys, the crepes are on the plate and this is, oh, this is goodness on wheel. I've zoomed up. There's a salad on the side, but we don't care about the salad. Go away salad. You're not wanted today. We have to operate and cut these. This is ham and cheese. Let's start with the long one, the cigarillo style. And, oh man, that's, that like reminds me in France and you see when you press then, oh, look at that. That's what I'm talking about. A creamy mushroomy and you can just slice one piece. That's what it looks like. And you just eat it. There we have it, people. That's it. I'm starving. Oh, this is good. Oh man. That's it. I'm trying off. Back to France. Oh, the mushroom is beautiful. Crispy layer of crepe, nice and thin, fresh. The frozen hasn't altered anything in the taste. All the mushroom taste is in there. It's beautiful. And now this is my favorite, the ham and cheese. I can eat so many of those. I might be piggy today. Uh, Oh, look at that. Let me look at that. Honestly. No, is that good or is that good? That's the question I'm asking myself. Uh, wow. And you can make easy. You can make these squares and stuff because it's crispy and it's crispy and creamy. Oh, okay. Let's wrap this up, people. Um, I'm really proud to say that we've managed to reproduce the famous classic French crepes, two flavors. You've got here with the sauce cream. Remember it's a bechamel with cream, ham and cheese, gruyere cheese with ham, a beautiful smoky ham. And on that side here, we've got the mushroom infused with the duxelles, purely vegetarian. It's absolutely beautiful, but it completes the video guys. As always, if you want to support me on Patreon, on tp.com, or just subscribe to the channel, I would appreciate it because it always helped me. I hope you enjoyed the one. If you stay to the end, thank you very much. I'll see you all next week actually for one of the last video of the year, and it's going to be a major, major announcement. So make sure to be there then. Take care everyone. I'll see you then. Bye-bye.