Hollandaise

Ingredients

• 125 g butter

• 2 egg yolks

• 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar

• juice of a lemon (for flavour)

• salt

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan, skimming the surface to remove any white solids that may float to the top. Once melted, reduce the heat to keep the butter warm without risk of burning it.

Put the egg yolks and white wine vinegar into a glass or metal bowl and add a pinch of salt and a splash of cold water. Whisk the ingredients together before placing the bowl over a small saucepan of barely simmering water. Continuously whisk the mixture until pale and thick. This can take around
3-5 minutes.

Remove the bowl from the heat and start to whisk in the melted butter bit by bit until it is completely incorporated. You should now have a creamy and thick hollandaise sauce.

Season your hollandaise with lemon juice. Keep warm until served.

Recipe by Pro Cook

About the Sauce

Eggs Benedict rules the world! A brekafast of a rich, creamy, lemony yellow sauce that tops poached eggs, which lay upon strips of streaked bacon, held together by freshly toasted English muffins. What’s that lemony sauce, you ask? None other than the hollandaise. Brought to life with some butter, egg yolks, lemon juice and white wine vinegar, hollandaise is the sauce you serve on fish, eggs or veggies. Spoon it over sautéed asparagus and you’ll not even want to eat it for it looks just so pretty. But then temptation takes over and you bite into a crunchy asparagus bursting with the strong flavour of the hollandaise and you just can’t stop at one.

Hollandaise originates in France, as do the other four sauces – not from Holland or anywhere else in The Netherlands – and it is not the same as mayonnaise, to avoid confusion. While hollandaise is a hot sauce which must be served immediately at room temperature, mayo is a cold sauce, which does not incorporate butter and vinegar, but oil instead. And béarnaise is a popular derivative of hollandaise, richer, with the use of shallot, black pepper and tarragon.