Made with Love

by Peter on Jul.20, 2009, under breakfast

Eggs-Benedict-1725

There are many ways I know my wife really loves me. Not the least of which is she occasionally makes me Eggs Benedict for breakfast. I love breakfast foods, but hate getting up early enough to make them, something I need to overcome as one of my life long goals is to own a Bed & Breakfast. Luckily I have a wife who is a morning person. I remember the first time she made them for me. The thing that scared her the most was making the hollandaise. There seems to be a mystique about hollandaise. Most people think that it is this extremely difficult operation that should only be attempted by a “trained professional.” While it isn’t one of the easiest sauces to make, it sure doesn’t deserve its reputation as being too difficult for a regular home cook.

I am going to walk you through making hollandaise, showing you the few areas where things can go wrong and, hopefully, at the same time dispelling its mystique. These instructions are going to look long, but don’t worry, it really is quite simple. The instructions are long because I want to make sure I have explained everything there you need to know. So here we go.

Hollandaise Sauce

2 each Egg Yolks
1 oz. White Wine (water can be used if you don’t have or use wine)
6 oz. Butter, clarified (more on that in a minute), warm but not hot
1/2 each Lemon
1 pinch Salt
1 dash Cayenne

First a note on the butter. Most chefs prefer to use clarified butter over plain melted butter for various reasons. One of the main reasons though is that non-clarified butter contains a lot moisture. When making larger batches of hollandaise this can thin the sauce more than a chef wants it to be. Taking the moisture out of the butter allows the chef to thin the hollandaise as he/she sees fit, and they can do it with liquids more flavorful than water. If you find yourself pressed for time, melted butter usually works quite well though so don’t freak if you don’t have time to clarify it. And now, back to the recipe.

Place about 1 inch of water in a medium sized saucepan and bring to a simmer. Keep the water just below boiling. In a metal bowl that will fit snugly in your saucepan, but with the bottom of the bowl well above the water line, add your egg yolks and wine. Place over the saucepan and whip the eggs until they reach the ribbon stage. Basically all this means is that when you run a spoon through the mixture it briefly holds the line made before the mixture falls back on itself (that’s not the exact definition, but that is the effect you’re looking for). Be careful not to overcook your eggs and turn them into scrambled eggs. If you do that then you have to start over again from the beginning. This is the only place where you can screw up and not be able to “fix” it. From this point on everything is fixable. Remove the bowl from the heat and place it on the counter. If you have someone who can help you have them hold the bowl for the next step. If you have no help then here is a simple chef’s trick to make your life easier. Take a kitchen towel and roll it up lengthwise. Place it on the counter top and form a ring with it. Place your bowl, containing the egg yolk mixture on that. It will prevent your bowl from rocking and wandering away as you do the next step.

The next step is to slowly add the clarified butter. You want to do this slowly, at first, to create your emulsion or you will end up “breaking” the sauce (the liquid and the fat will separate making it look grainy and curdled). I usually start by using a ladle to, very slowly drizzle the butter in as I whisk vigorously to incorporate the oil (butter). Once you’ve added about 1/3 of the butter and the sauce has started to thicken you can increase the speed you add the butter, but still not too fast. Once you’ve added the last of the butter give the sauce a good squirt of lemon juice and a small dash of cayenne pepper. Taste the sauce. If you used salted butter you might not need to add any more salt, if you used unsalted butter add a pinch now. Taste again. The lemon juice should balance out the richness of the butter and egg yolks and should be very prevalent, but it should not overpower the other flavors (this is probably the biggest mistake I see when home cooks make hollandaise). The sauce should be a little thinner than mayonnaise. If not thin with a little hot water, adding only a teaspoon at a time, until you get the consistency you like.

If you need to hold the sauce for a little while as you finish the rest of the food, pour out the water from the saucepan (it’s probably still to hot) and replace it with an inch of hot water from the faucet. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it over the sauce pot. It should hold like this for at least 20 minutes if not 1/2 hour.

There are basically three reasons a hollandaise will break. The first reason is that you tried to incorporate the butter into the egg mixture too quickly. The other 2 reasons are heat related, either the sauce got too hot or too cold. There’s nothing to fear though. The fix is easy. The first thing to try is to add about 1 tablespoon cold water to the hollandaise and whisk vigorously. This will bring back many broken sauces. If this doesn’t work then on to plan #2. In a new bowl place 1 egg yolk and a splash of wine. Continue as if you were starting all over, by cooking the yolk over hot water and then proceeding with the recipe. This time though, instead of using butter use the broken hollandaise and very slowly adding the broken sauce as you would the butter. This is guaranteed to bring your hollandaise back from the brink of failure.

I hope you found this informative and has inspired you to go out and try this sauce on your own. I’d say good luck, but you won’t need it. You have all the information you need to make your hollandaise a success.

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