The Easiest and Most Dreamy Banana Pudding
Hello friends and welcome back toWill It Sous Vide? , the column where I usually do whatever you want with my immersion circulator. Given that our last sous vide adventure was a bit, shall we say, stressful, I decided to devote this week to something lighter and less meaningful: fucking banana pudding.
If you come across a selection of WISV topics often , then you know I’ve wanted to write about it for a long time, mainly because I no longer live near the Publix grocery store and Portland just doesn’t have banana pudding together. Wise. I also suspected that making sous vide pudding would be a breeze as you don’t have to worry about stirring, searing, or any other nonsense.
For those of you whose lives have not been blessed with the glory of this wonderful dessert, let me offer a quick explanation. Like most southern dishes, the genius of banana pudding lies in its simplicity. It consists of three or four things – vanilla pudding, bananas, Nilla waffles, and some sort of filling – and one of those things is almost always bought in the store (waffles, yes).
The only part that really requires some culinary prowess is the pudding. A lot of people use an instant product, and I’m not going to hate this choice, but homemade pudding can make your banana pudding a lot more scarf-friendly. To see if my immersion circulator could help me make creamy banana pudding in the simplest way possible, I first had to find a pudding recipe.
I settled on this from Anova , it’s a pretty simple vanilla. To make it you will need:
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup ultra-fine sugar
- 3 large eggs plus 2 large yolks
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- Pinch of kosher salt
Once I collected all of the above, poured it all into a bowl and beat with a hand blender until it was “smooth and frothy” as indicated in the recipe. Then, to add even more banana enjoyment to the pood, I added a couple of fun peels to the mixture.
The bag was then placed in a 180-degree bath for about half an hour, during which time it was taken out and stirred several times, because we don’t want our food to become too smug or lumpy. (Although the original recipe says the pudding needs to be cooked for 45 minutes, mine was very thick at 30, so I took it out then.)
When I first took the pudding out of the bag, I was unhappy because it didn’t look like pudding at all, but was made from scrambled eggs and compost.
But then I removed the peel and hit it again with the immersion blender and the pudding was smooth and I calmed down.
I licked the pudding lightly – I used a spoon – and found it sweet, creamy, juicy, and lightly flavored with the kindness of nanners.
Then I layed it all out in my new vintage pyrex, spreading a thin layer of pudding, sprinkling with Nilla waffles and then slicing thinly with bananas. I repeated this step, finishing with a layer of pudding, until I (unfortunately) ran out of pudding.
Then I covered the whole thing with cling film, gently pressing it against the pudding so that it does not form a crust. He then went to the refrigerator to cool off and mingle while I went to play drag queen bingo.
The next morning, it was time to follow through. You can go with whipped cream or meringue filling, but as my good friend Eric noticed at the bar last night, meringues are mostly egg whites and are therefore healthy food. This thing is already chock full of potassium, so I opted for whipped cream just in case. (I didn’t make very sweet whipped cream, however. Only a little vanilla was added to the dairy products.)
It looked a little slick, so I squashed some more waffles to make a nice border.
Then I have to eat this (for breakfast).
Then I have to ask myself our favorite question.
Will there be a banana sous vide pudding?
Answer? Publix who ? I took a bite, looked around my kitchen and said, “I love myself,” although, to be honest, I didn’t know what I could say out loud. This pudding had the perfect amount of sweet, rich, and banana, and I’m not entirely sure if I want to share it with anyone.
Can this level of perfection be achieved without an immersion circulation pump? Certainly. Pudding is not that hard to make on the stove, and an electric pudding cooker requires a lot of gradual additions, continuous stirring and cuddling to make sure it doesn’t burn at the bottom. It’s easier this way, and I like lightness. You can also cover the pudding with banana peels, which is great if you’re not allergic to latex. What I’m talking about is that banana pudding can be your perfection, and you don’t even have to stand over the stove and you should be really happy about it.