Quiche survey: Top 8 tested
Quiche Lorraine is the best known, made by adding chopped up bacon to the egg mixture. Cheese seems to be a later addition to the French traditional recipe, but I don’t think we need to be too precious about it. If it tastes good, enjoy it.
Quiches are a bit of trouble to make if you don’t like making pastry. However, you can buy pastry and still make a decent quiche. Try using puff or flaky pastry as well as the traditional shortcrust for a difference in texture.
You will get very disappointing results if you microwave anything made with pastry.
Our readymade cooked samples are best placed in the oven heated to 170C for 10-15 minutes until heated through and the pastry crisp.
The bad news is that just 100g of quiche — a quarter of most samples — delivers a high enough 300 calories, and a quarter of that comes from fats, of which 6-10% are saturated fats, so make sure you have no more than 100g of quiche at a time.
Instead fill up on nutritious side dishes such as raw or cooked grated carrot, cabbage, beetroot and celeriac. Or serve with a handful of peas cooked in a little stock and puréed - a delicious reminder of summer.
From a rectangular tin, this quiche can be bought whole or as a quarter or half portion. A deliciously flavoursome, creamy light filling with gorgeous smoked bacon, onion and fluffy eggs encased in rich pastry is superb. Everyone’s favourite.
Score: 9
We tried this mini quiche to see how well spelt flour worked with the butter, eggs, cream, broccoli, cherry tomato, feta cheese and seasoning and we were very happy with it. The pastry was light and the filling creamy, with not quite as much tomato as we would have liked, but there was plenty of feta.
Score: 8
From their Made without Wheat range this quiche is gluten-free with rice and maize flour and potato starch used in the pastry instead of wheat flour and it works very well. The filling has maple cured smoked bacon which is a little overpowering for the cheddar cheese, gruyere cheese and cream, but overall light and delicious. Unsustainable palm oil is disappointingly there.
Score: 8
A light, creamy bite, the pastry is crisp. Not much taste of bacon here, but overall a good product.
Score: 7.75
This mini quiche had quite a lot of tomato which didn’t have a lot of taste. Overall not a lot of flavour. Pleasant enough, but not a favourite. Unsustainable palm oil used in pastry.
Score: 7
In the words of the Great British Bake-Off, ‘A Soggy Bottom’ was the problem here as it didn’t crisp up in at least 15 minutes. It was quite heavy on the eggs too and it seemed that the lack of flavour was attempted to be compensated for with too much salt.
Score: 6.5
A nice, creamy filling here with plenty of ham, a little salty, but in a case of good, crisp pastry. Pity there is palm oil there.
Score: 7.75
Lovely, crisp pastry, the filling nicely leeky, with good bacon, but the egg mixture is a bit heavy. Contains vegetable oil which could mean palm oil. We would be happier to know exactly what type of vegetable oils are used in products.
Score: 7
