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It's kind of like grilled cheese meets ham and cheese meets egg and cheese meets something French. Hi everyone, I'm Claire Saffitz. Welcome to my home kitchen. Today I have a kind of maximalist brunch recipe. I'm going to be making Croque Madame, which is a French sandwich that's like gooey and cheesy and delicious. It has ham and cheese on it and an egg. I'm going to be making everything on my Made In carbon steel griddle, but I'm kind of taking it in the direction of like egg sandwich the same time. So I'm going to show you how to make it. It's really fun. It's really delicious.
So Croque Madame is a French dish. I feel like you actually see it more in the US than you see it in France, but it's basically like a cheesy ham and cheese sandwich that has béchamel, like a white sauce on it. So it's a little gooey. It is a knife and fork sandwich. It's not the kind of sandwich you pick up and eat. There is a Croque Monsieur and a Croque Madame. Croque Monsieur is without an egg. Croque Madame has an egg on top. I don't love an egg on top. I want the egg to be in the sandwich. So the version that I'm making you have like a medium and over medium egg that goes into the sandwich with the ham and the cheese. It gets topped with béchamel and more grated cheese and broiled until
it's like bubbly and browned and delicious and gooey. And then you eat it that way. It is kind of like a gourmet egg sandwich. Ingredients. And again, this is sort of my interpretation. This is not super classic. So I am using sliced sourdough. This is a whole wheat sourdough. It's like a really, really good quality supermarket sourdough. Typically with Croque Madame or Croque Monsieur you would see it more on like a pain de mie, like a sliced white bread basically. I have some sliced Swiss cheese, 1/2 a lb. I have some thinly sliced cooked ham. The best option for ham, I think, is
prosciutto cotto, like an unsmoked cooked ham. It's really hard to find. So, go for just like a more mild cooked ham. I wouldn't do like the honey ham, basically, from the grocery store. I have some grated Gruyère cheese, some butter, for seasoning the béchamel, I have Tabasco and a little bit of nutmeg. I have Dijon mustard for going on the sandwiches. I have four eggs. This makes four sandwiches, so one egg per sandwich. And then over here for the béchamel, I have some two cups of whole milk, more butter, a little flour cuz we make it with a roux, and then just salt and pepper. Specialty equipment, you will need a small saucepan for making your béchamel. I'm cooking the eggs and grilling the sandwiches on my Made In
carbon steel griddle. It's great cuz it goes across two burners, so I can do all four sandwiches at the same time. I'm also using it to I'm sort of making like fried eggs to go in the sandwiches, so I'm going to start there. And then the whole thing is going to go into the oven under the broiler to broil the sandwiches. So, you'll need some kind of oven-safe griddle or large skillet. I'm going to clear this off cuz we're going to start by making the béchamel. And then once the béchamel is done, we're going to move over to the stovetop and griddle everything. Before I get into the recipe, I want to thank our friends at Made In for sponsoring this episode. I've been working with Made In for such a long
time, and the reason is because of quality. It is professional cookware that is made also for the home cook, and I love their carbon steel griddle. It's probably the most versatile piece of cookware that I own. It is naturally nonstick, but it also becomes more naturally nonstick the more that you use it. I also kind of love it, it's like the one piece of cookware that I don't really have to clean. It's like you can just kind of like wipe it clean, hit it with a little oil, it's ready to go for your the next use. It fits over two burners, so it's really cool cuz you can create zone cooking. I use it for cooking breakfast. You can do pancakes, like eggs and bacon on one side. It's
just this really large cook surface. It is safe up to 1200° so I can also bring it outside, cook it or put it over the grill, use it in my outdoor oven. That's what makes it so versatile. They also have a press that is made of stainless steel. This is safe up to 800° F so you can use it for smash burgers. So today I'm using the griddle because I'm going to make Croque Madame and I'm going to use it couple different ways. I'm going to fry some eggs on it. I'm going to use it to griddle the sandwiches. I'm going to use the press to make sure I get all that nice contact and like golden brown crust and then the entire thing is actually going to go into my oven under the broiler to get some like nice bubbly
cheese on top. So if you want to take advantage of their summer sale, you can go to the link in the description below get up to 30% off your order. That includes the carbon steel griddle or any of their entire line of cookware. Hope you check it out and now we're going to get back to the recipe and make some Croque Madame. So we're going to start with our butter and our flour in our saucepan but first I have to warm up the milk. When you're making béchamel and you have this hot roux, if you add cold milk, it's going to make it more prone to lump to lumpiness basically. So I'm going to just warm this in the microwave. This is cold.
Close. So now we're going to start by making our roux. I have 3 Tbsp of butter. I have more butter for griddling behind me but just for the béchamel we're going to start with 3 Tbsp. So we're going to get this over like medium low. So we're going to add our butter. We're going to get our butter melting in here. And if you were making this for a crowd, you can make the béchamel in advance. So we just want the butter to melt and then we're going to add our flour. When you're making a roux, it's generally equal quantities. You want to make sure there's no lumps. The flour doesn't form any lumps. And now I'm cooking this over kind of like a medium low heat, and the idea is that we want to cook out the flour, but we don't
want to put a lot of color on the roux. So, we're going to cook this in the What you want is this kind of honeycomb look to the roux, where it's like bubbling and you get this kind of honeycomb texture to the mixture. So, this just takes a couple of minutes, and I'm going to grab my hot milk. Yeah, so that kind of bubbling, where it gets that honeycomb look, that's what you want. That's how you know the flour is cooking. So, when you're adding the milk, you want to whisk constantly. And initially, as soon as you add the liquid, it's going to cause all the starches to release from the flour, and it's going to thicken quite a bit. So, keep whisking and pouring so that you don't form any big lumps from the flour.
And that's why you want the milk to be warm, because if you add it cold, the whole thing just kind of like seizes. So, you're going to add all the milk and whisk to work out any lumps. And now, we want to bring this mixture up to a simmer. And that is going to like activate all the starches in the flour, so it's going to reach its kind of full thickening potential. We're just going to keep whisking as this comes up. So, now we have this really nice smooth mixture, almost at a simmer. I'm going to turn off the heat, and now we're going to season it. I'm going to add some salt. You can add a pinch of cayenne, or the really classic French one would be piment d'Espelette, Espelette pepper, but it's like really hard to find and
really expensive. I'm going to add a little dash of Tabasco, part of my like Americanized version of this. And then, also classic is a little bit of nutmeg. Fresh nutmeg would be better, but I'm just going to use already ground. Just like a pinch. And it doesn't give it like that warm toasty spice like the holidays. It just gives like a little bit of background warmth in a way that's really nice. I'm going to add pepper, but I'm actually going to add white pepper. I have some white pepper over here. You don't have to use white pepper. It's kind of more of a specialty item, but I really like white pepper. It has like a kind of a funkiness to it. And then you don't get little black specs in your béchamel, but
like who cares if you have those? Doesn't really matter. Ooh. White my pepper. Ooh. Thank goodness. I just want to taste my béchamel to see how the seasoning is. Mhm. I know it doesn't sound like a milk sauce. It's not really selling it. The béchamel's delicious. Ooh, good heat from the Tabasco. Just adding a little more salt. I'm going to get this into a separate bowl so I can let it kind of cool off. And in fact, I can put it right back where I had the milk. I want this to cool a little bit, so I'll kind of stir it periodically. And you can do this part ahead and have this cool You can like use it from cold from the fridge.
If you add cheese to this, it's a Mornay sauce. Just we're talking about it's a mother sauce. Béchamel. This bread is not the freshest bread. Let's use that side. That means this bread has been staling for a little while, but it's actually a great use for stale bread. So I have eight slices. So you can use You can use whatever kind of sandwich bread you really like. I'm going to start by doing a thin layer of Dijon mustard across all the bread slices. I feel like the Dijon is so important here because the dish is really rich. Like there's ham and cheese and béchamel and then more cheese and an egg. It's a lot. It needs the acidity and the spiciness of the mustard. It's just so crucial. So
I'm doing a thin layer, but I'm putting it everywhere. Full coverage on all eight slices. Without it, to me it's just like it needs something. It needs that acidity and that's also partly why I did Tabasco in the béchamel. Tabasco is super vinegary in addition to being super hot. So it adds that heat and it's like a little bit of acid. So, this is another step that you could do in advance. You could kind of pre-assemble everything and then do the eggs and the griddling like on site to order. I like Dijon cuz I like the spiciness and the acidity. If you had a different like you could use like a whole grain mustard, whatever you like. It'd be funny to do like spicy brown then it's like really part of
the kind of American spin on the recipe. The next step is to top each of the bread slices with a little bit of béchamel. This is going over the mustard and I'm pouring it. Again, if this were fully cooled it would be more like scoopable, spreadable. So, I'm just going to kind of lightly spread this around. When I was testing this I was like, what if I just add a lot of Dijon to the béchamel? And that you can do that and I tested it that way, but I like it better. I feel like you tasted the mustard more when I left it separate and as a distinct layer. And then also if you have any leftover,
I feel like it's more versatile to have just a plain béchamel. I'm going to layer cheese. This is just like a basic deli sliced Swiss cheese, which is truly my weakness in life. So, I'm putting this on all the slices because having that cheese layer on the top and bottom helps to keep the sandwich like it's like the glue. It holds all the layers together. So, I'm dividing this across all the slices of bread. And it's not like a super thick layer, but it's enough to melt and adhere everything. I think a lot about sandwich construction. It's so important. A sandwich that is like hard to eat is just like such a bummer. I want every bite of every sandwich to have everything. Things I think about a lot. So, next I'm going to go in with the
ham. So, this is like a Virginia baked ham. I just think a sort of a neutral cooked ham is what you want. We have our sandwiches assembled. Almost. I'm going to bring them over along with the béchamel and we're now going to get cooking on the griddle. So, I have my Made In carbon steel griddle across two burners, preheating on kind of medium high. This is 5 Tbsp of butter. Four are going to be for spreading over the bread when I go to griddle the sandwiches, and one is just for now for cooking the eggs. So, we're going to cook our four eggs. I'm going to break the yolk and spread it around because see my aforementioned note about
sandwiches and how like I don't only want to have two bites have yolk in it. You know what I mean? It's like went everywhere. So, I'm going to take my Tbsp of butter. I'm on kind of between medium and medium high. One thing I like about using this bread is that when you try an egg, it's like very close to the shape of the bread. So, it fits really well. I'm going to turn that down a little bit. So, I'm going to hit the eggs with some salt and pepper, but my hand is wet. Whenever you're seasoning, try to use a dry hand.
Little black pepper on top. So, I'm going to break the yolk and basically kind of cook them over medium. And as soon as they're done, they can go right onto my sandwiches. So, I'm going to bring this my board over. So, I like to spread the yolk around sort of. Again, it's like I want the whole I want the yolk to be everywhere. And give a little flip. And then once the egg is just like a little bit set that yolk, then it can come off. And by having the egg in the middle of the sandwich, even though I'm grilling it, I'm not like cooking the egg a lot more. It's kind of insulated by the other ingredients, if that makes sense. And once that yolk is just a little bit set, onto the bread. Now we're going to grill
the sandwiches. So I'm going to close these guys up. And now spread that remaining unsalted butter. And I'm just going to spread it on the first side of the bread. And a thin layer. It's like we got a lot going on in these sandwiches. Like there's just there's a lot of fat. There's a lot of cheese. There's the béchamel. The ham. So just a really thin layer. So now we're going to get them back on the griddle. I'm going to cook these on medium. Medium Oh, and I can dial it down if I feel like they're taking on color before the cheese is really getting a chance to melt. So these are going to go buttered side down onto my griddle. And I'm going to use my press to really weight them down. I not only
want all the contact between the bread and the griddle so it gets even and golden brown, but I want all the layers to like fuse. So I'm going to cook these until that first side is golden brown and the cheese on like the lower piece of bread is melted. So I might turn my heat up a little bit. And very important, I have my broiler. My broiler's already on. It's been preheating. So I haven't yet put the butter on the second side of the sandwich. I'm going to wait because I don't want the butter to just come off on the press as I'm cooking. They're starting to get nice and golden brown on the bottom and I feel like they're nicely compacted. So now I'm going to go ahead and spread the top layer with the
remaining butter. I decrease the heat a little bit because I need some work time to spread them. I don't want them to get too dark. So these are nice and golden brown and crispy on the bottom. I'm going to flip them It's kind of like grilled cheese meets ham and cheese meets egg and cheese meets something French. Oh, they look so good. So now I'm going to put them under the broiler. But first I have to top them so they get more of this gooey béchamel. And this is where I feel like you want a more generous layer, or at least I want a more generous layer. And I'm not bringing it all the way to the edges because under the broiler it's going to spread out more.
I'm going to kill my heat because there's going to be some carryover when I transfer it into the broiler. So it's going to continue to brown on the bottom in the oven. And now more cheese on top. And it seems like a crazy amount of cheese and it is I mean it is a lot of cheese. It's like, you know, almost like 2 oz of the cheese per sandwich. But the cheese like cooks down quite a bit, too. All right, so now we're going to transfer this to the oven and broil until the tops are like super bubbly and browned. I'm going to keep a close eye on it cuz I really don't want them to burn. It's smelling like the cheese is browning.
Oh my gosh. Okay, it's starting. So we'll be done in seconds. They look so good. I'm so excited. They were under the broiler for maybe like 3 minutes or so. I feel like they could have maybe gotten a little bit more browned, but the bread was starting to catch, so I pulled them out. And what I really like is you get parts where the cheese like crisp on the griddle. Okay, so these need to cool a little bit cuz they are like insanely hot and like molten. So, the bottom is now nicely golden. Like I got this
sandwich weighs a ton. These plates are too small. Oh, well. I'm plating three cuz we're three people. By the way, number one best way to get burned in the kitchen is forget you had piece of cookware in the oven. So, always cuz like the one really bad burn I ever got was from grabbing a hot handle. So, always cover cuz you're you're going to forget. I'm going to cut it in half. And even though it's a knife and fork cuz it is so gooey, I'll see if I can pick it up and show you. Ooh, see how the yolk it's like still orange. It's not like opaque and yellow. Like it's been cooked but not running. I really do have to eat this with a knife and fork. But you got the ham, you got the melted cheese, you got the gooiness from the béchamel. It
looks delish. Thank goodness for mustard. Otherwise, this would be a lot. Mhm. It has like just the right crispiness on the bread and the right gooiness, but the mustard helps cut through so much of it. It's really well balanced and somehow doesn't feel like too much. It's really delicious and super excited that we're going to all have these for lunch and enjoy them. When I was testing this recipe, it was like we had croque madame for dinner a few times and like no one complained. It's really good. So, really fun. Like I said, there's a lot of things you can do to kind of make these ahead. Make the béchamel in advance. You can kind of get the sandwiches like pre-assembled and then fry the eggs and griddle a la minute cuz obviously you want to
serve them hot. And that last little broiler gives it like such a nice toastiness. So, I want to thank our friends at Made In for sponsoring the episode. I love using the carbon steel griddle. It's naturally nonstick. It gets better over time, and just such a versatile piece of cookware. Go to the link in the description below, and check out Made In's summer sale. You can get up to 30% off your purchase. So, go ahead, check out the carbon steel griddle, the full line of carbon steel, plus their stainless clad. It's really good stuff. So, thank you so much for watching, and don't forget to like and subscribe.
