Easy Hollandaise Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the basic formula for hollandaise? ›

In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolks, lemon juice, cold water, salt and pepper. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Gradually whisk yolk mixture into butter. Continue whisking over low heat for 8 minutes, or until sauce is thickened.

The most common mistake people make with Hollandaise is adding melted butter that is too hot, or adding too much too soon. When this happens, the emulsion breaks — it becomes thin and grainy. If your butter is too hot, just stop making the Hollandaise for a minute or two to allow the butter to cool.

Hollandaise Sauce Ingredients. Butter – Unsalted is best, but if salted butter is all you have on hand then leave out the extra salt. Cut it into small cubes so it melts quickly and evenly on the stove.

Why Does Hollandaise Sauce Break? Over-heating or overcooking the egg yolks is one culprit. Next time, be sure to use a double boiler and heat the yolks gently to avoid overcooking them. The second cause is either adding too much butter or adding it too quickly.

The butter breaks into minute droplets, while the egg yolk acts as an emulsifier, helping to keep those droplets dispersed, as well as thickening the sauce. What you get is a creamy, smooth sauce with a rich texture and mild flavor, perfect for topping eggs, fish, or vegetables.

While there's risk in eating undercooked meat (rare burgers) and raw egg dishes (Caesar dressing), hollandaise is particularly vulnerable to foodborne illness because the egg yolks aren't fully cooked, and the sauce isn't served hot (eggs should be heated to at least 135 degrees).

Hollandaise sauces are best cooked at temperatures around 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything over this maximum puts this condiment at risk of splitting, which occurs when the creamy, smooth emulsion of the egg yolks, lemon juice, and melted butter breaks. The sauce will separate into pools of fat floating in liquid.

If you are concerned about salmonella, use pasteurized eggs or cook the eggs to at least 165F to kill any bacteria; however, this can potentially cause the eggs to scramble. Egg yolks start to coagulate around 149F (65C) and will start to curdle around 160-170F (yolks completely curdle at 185F (85C).

Make sure the butter is between 130-140 degrees Fahrenheit (55-60 degrees Celsius). While constantly whisking, add the butter to the sabayon in a steady stream. Add enough butter until you achieve a somewhat thick consistency.

How to make hollandaise sauce thicker? ›

How do you fix a runny hollandaise? Blenders tend to make runny hollandaise - it's usually because the butter was too cold and hasn't cooked the eggs enough to thicken them. To thicken a runny hollandaise, tip the mixture into a heatproof bowl set over simmering water and whisk over the heat until thickened.

When making hollandaise, some chefs prefer to use clarified butter which is straight butter fat. In order to take advantage of the flavors in butter's milk solids and whey, some chefs prefer to use whole butter.

You keep whisking the mixture as you add the melted butter because you want to break it up into tiny, tiny drops. Each tiny drop ends up surrounded by emulsifiers . But to give the emulsifiers a helping hand, you need to keep the butter from gathering in a big glob.

The eggs will scramble when they are exposed to too much heat. When making hollandaise over a double boiler, you have to pull the bowl of sauce off of the heat occasionally, so it can cool down a little. This will prevent the eggs from scrambling.

The classical ingredients of hollandaise sauce are egg yolks, melted (often clarified) butter, mixture of water and wine vinegar and occasionally a drop of lemon juice. Structurally it is both an emulsion and a foam. As with all great gastronomic inventions, the history and the inventor of hollandaise sauce is unknown.

The scientific principle here is the development of an emulsion, using egg yolks and lemon juice as agents of that process. You will whisk the egg yolks so vigorously that thousands, perhaps millions, of egg globules are suspended in a mixture of lemon juice, salt and pepper.