Rich, Delish and Easy Sauce: Hollandaise

Hello from Arizona! I hope you are all having a great weekend. Today’s post is a guest post from Raija, one of my dearest friends and one of my favorite people to eat and drink with! I hope you enjoy her post on mouthwatering Hollandaise sauce. Have a good day!

Hollandaise is a sauce that seems very fancy — the key to Eggs Benedict, a sauce for asparagus, and the basis for Bernaise Sauce, so luscious over a good steak (which uses tarragon vinegar, or white wine, tarragon and vinegar instead of lemon juice for the acid).  But its really not too difficult to make, and you can do it without a double boiler pretty effectively (or at least I’ve had luck!).  I looked up online “hollandaise sauce” and used a Food Network recipe to get the right ratios of egg yolk, lemon juice and butter. 
The ingredients for hollandaise are as follows per serving (let’s say one yolk = one serving…you may have a little over one serving, depending on the size of egg, etc.)

One egg yolk
About 3 1/4 teaspoons of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of melted butter

Melt the butter and set it aside to cool just slightly — you don’t want it so hot that it will cook the egg yolk.  Use a metal bowl that is not too much bigger than the saucepan you are going to use as your make-shift double boiler (unless you have a double boiler).  Put just enough water in the pan so that when you place the bowl on top of the pan that the pan does not directly touch the water.  I put about an inch of water in the sauce pan and get it to a boil.  Once its at a boil, I turn the heat down, and put a dishcloth over the sauce pan (be careful so it doesn’t hang over and touch the heating element or flame of the burner).  In the metal bowl, whisk vigorously the egg yolk and lemon juice together until it becomes thicker and increases in volume.  Place the bowl over the towel and the barely boiling water, while still whisking.  The dishcloth helps hold the bowl in place while whisking and makes sure that the water doesn’t touch the bowl.  This is where its a little bit tricky – keep whisking quickly while slowly drizzling the melted butter into the egg yolk and lemon juice.   You have to whisk rapidly so that the egg doesn’t cook.  Keep whisking.  The sauce should continue to thicken and double in volume.  Once at this point you can take the sauce off of the heat and either serve immediately, or keep in a warm spot off the heat, covered.  If you wait a bit to use it and it starts to cool, you can still keep it together with whisking rapidly. 

Source

This sauce stuns me each time I make it — it is so rich and delicious — I often end up using my fingers to get every last taste from the bowl.  Mmmm…  Its also very quick and uses very few ingredients.  Its a great way to make a dish very decadent. 

I hope this recipe works for you — please give feedback if it doesn’t work.  I’ve made Hollandaise twice recently and both times with great result.  Next I need to find a way to successfully make poached eggs! 🙂