Serves: 4
Approx cost: €0.90
Approx calories (for one quarter of the yield): ~180
Approx preparation and cooking time: ~5 minutes
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #0B0B61;”]One of the things I recently wanted to start trying was improving my sauce repertoire. I don’t make that many sauces – the ones I do consist mainly of balsamic or red wine reductions, the inimitable béchamel sauce and of course some curious concoctions I brew up myself (which reminds me – one day I’ll post my steak sauce… I love it – hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I do, but that’s a post for another day! Anyway, what better place to start than my adopted country of residence right now – France. A bit of further reading revealed something called the “Mother Sauces“. Excuse the giant Wikipedia quote, but I found it pretty fascinating to read about, as well as being a great place to start my saucy adventures (haha) :).
Sauces in French cuisine date back to the Middle Ages. There were hundreds of sauces in the culinary repertoire. In ‘classical’ French cooking (19th and 20th century until nouvelle cuisine), sauces were a major defining characteristic of French cuisine.
In the 19th century, the chef Antonin Carême classified sauces into four families, each of which was based on a mother sauce (also called grandes sauces). Carême’s four mother sauces were:
- Béchamel, based on milk, thickened with a white roux.
- Espagnole, based on brown stock (usually veal), thickened with a brown roux.
- Velouté, based on a white stock, thickened with a blonde roux.
- Allemande, based on velouté sauce, is thickened with egg yolks and heavy cream.
In the early 20th century, the chef Auguste Escoffier updated this classification to five mother sauces. They are:
- Sauce Béchamel, milk based sauce, thickened with a white roux.
- Sauce Espagnole, a fortified brown veal stock sauce.
- Sauce Velouté, white stock based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison.
- Sauce Hollandaise, an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon or vinegar.
- Sauce Tomate, tomato based sauce.
A sauce which is derived from one of the mother sauces by augmenting with additional ingredients is sometimes called a small sauce or secondary sauce.Most sauces commonly used in classical cuisine are small sauces. For example, Bechamel can be made into Mornay by the addition of Gruyère or any cheese one may like, and Espagnole becomes Bordelaise with the addition and reduction of red wine, shallots, and poached beef marrow.
Having recently had some langoustine, and now some steamed salmon, I decided the perfect accompaniment to these would be a good Hollandaise sauce. It’s the perfect pairing for fish and other seafood. Light, glossy and buttery, with a fabulous taste of lemon pervading the sauce. Reading various techniques and recipes on the web I set to playing about a bit and believe that this recipe hits the nail on the head. First of all – forget all you ever read about about this sauce actually being hard to make. Stories of overheating the sauce, causing the yolks to scramble and separate from the butter… unless you do something very badly wrong you don’t have to worry about this with this recipe. It’s simple, it’s delicious, and you get mad props for announcing to people that you made your own Hollandaise sauce, because of this shroud of mystery that often surrounds the sauce as being “oh my God, so difficult”, much like home-made pasta, when you do it yourself and serve it to people it’s instantly impressive!
Don’t be tempted to add too much lemon juice – tastes vary from person to person, but the first time I made this I added the juice from a whole lemon and that was a bit of a citron-overload. Enjoy the sauce, and have a good day everyone!
Ingredients
- 100g Butter
- Juice from half a medium sized Lemon
- 2 Egg yolks
- 2 tsps Dijon Mustard
You’ll also need
- An Immersion Blender / Hand Blender
Instructions
- Start by separating the eggs and placing the Yolks into the blender jug. Don’t throw away the egg whites – you can use these for a chocolate mousse, meringue, omelettes etc. If your blender doesn’t have a jug then place them in a tall, quite narrow jug. You want the blender to be able to mix as much of the jug contents at the same time as possible. Add in the Dijon Mustard and the Lemon juice – being sure not to add in any seeds from the lemon!
- Using the blender, blend until pale, frothy and creamy. This won’t take long – about a minute of blending.
- This step you can do last, right before you serve the food as it will take very little time from here. Turn on the hob and start melting the butter in a pan. Be very careful to ensure the butter does not burn. Swirl the contents around a lot and when the butter is starting to bubble gently transfer it to a small jug (a jug is really important so you can do controlled pouring in the next stage).
- Start blending the Egg yolk, lemon juice and Mustard mixture again and begin pouring in the butter, blending all the while. I can’t stress enough the importance of pouring slowly. It should be literally a trickle… even slower than that. Imagine the size of a drop. Imagine a constant stream of droplets – that’s the sort of speed you should be pouring it at. Too fast and you risk cooking the egg yolks. Keep blending as you pour. Lift the blender up and down in the sauce to ensure everything is combined well. The sauce will start to thicken soon after beginning to add the butter. Keeping blending and pouring until all the butter has been combined. Once this is done, serve immediately atop your favourite fish or seafood, enjoy, and reap the compliments for your home-made French sauce! Ooh-la-la 🙂
I've been meaning to try Hollandaise sauce for a while because I've only tried eating this at a restaurant, not at home. I just bookmarked your recipe and hope to try it soon. My family eats salmon often but we always eat the same way, so this will be a nice change!
Thanks Nami – you might need to make it a couple of times before you find the perfect amount of lemon juice which works for you – some people like it more lemony, to cut through the butter taste – but as long as you pour the butter slowly it's super easy, and so delicious. To re-heat it (if you make too much and save some for the next day or whatever) then the best way is in a bowl over a pan of hot water, or on a very low setting in the microwave, stirring every 10 seconds or so (else the yolks will cook and curdle the sauce!)
I had the leftover hollandaise in the refrigerator in a tupperware container and just scooped a spoonful up and plopped it on top of some oven roasted asparagus spears. The residual heat melted the thickened sauce enough that I didn't have to reheat it at all. (Cause I'm lazy that way.) It wasn't quite the thick emulsion from when I first made it but it gave a wonderful flavour to the asparagus.
Good saucy history … I mean, history of sauces.
That's one lovely looking sauce … beautiful yellow, thick and creamy and so smooth!
Hehe, thanks Ping – the photo doesn't do it justice really… it was dark and I was in a made rush to serve it while everything was still hot – was really great though, and so easy 🙂
This is the perfect Hollandaise sauce recipe I have ever come across. I really learnt a lot from today's post, Charles! Who knew that ust by adding one or two ingredients, one popular sauce becomes another popular sauce?! And yes, looking forward to your steak recipe!
Thanks Purabi – I'm looking forward to cooking the steak too, although it may need to wait until the beginning of 2012 unfortunately – I have many things planned for December already now 😀
Very interesting Charles, your method reminds me a little of aioli. You need super fresh egg yolks since it's not really being cooked. I love Hollandaise but usually don't make it because it's too much trouble.
Hi Eva – indeed, I'd use a similar technique for aioli, or even just mayonnaise, since at their heart they're all yolk based emulsions with fat added, flavoured by various things – lemon juice, garlic, mustard etc.
With any sauce like that it's not something many people feel comfortable preparing or eating – preferring to get it ready made from a source which can pasteurise or radiate away any potential salmonella virus!
I first made a blender hollandaise recipe a friend share a couple of years ago for eggs benedict and ended up putting it on everything. I loved your including your study of the 'mother sauces' cause I'm obsessive that way too. 🙂 And, if I didn't have chicken in my fridge for pad thai tonight, I'd be thawing some salmon. Very tasty looking.
Hehe, yeah – it turned out rather good so I'm not surprised you ended up eating it with everything 😀 I never tried eggs benedict in fact, though now I see how easy it is to make them I'm definitely going to do it soon 😀
I especially recall how tasty it was on asparagus that I served with steak.
Charles, I love sauce hollandaise and yours looks better than all those I have ever tasted! I am one of those who have always believed it's something extremely difficult… I have never heard about mother sauces. Thank you for enlightening. Béchamel is the only one of them I make. Frankly, teriyaki is I think the only other sauce I regularly prepare and that's it.
Thank you for teaching as this delightful classic!
Every time you poured stock over a roux to thicken a sauce up, you've made veloute.
Haha! Actually I never do this, I think… The only thing I thicken with a roux is milk, so I get béchamel.
Haha, me too, although I've been throwing cheese into my béchamel sauces for years and never realised I was making a "mornay" sauce 😀 Aaaah, the fun of sauces, right? 😀
Surprising. My first chicken pot pie base was 2 tbsp each of flour and butter cooked together and then I added a cup each of milk and chicken stock. Kind of a combination of a bechamel and a veloute. I still do it that way to get the extra flavour from the stock and the creaminess from the milk though I sometimes dried onion soup mix to a cup of water as a fast substitution.
Oooh, nice tip 😉 Thanks!
"I sometimes dried onion soup"
I meant to write that, I sometimes ADD dried soup…
Lovely looking hollandaise, I usually make mine without mustard and lemon juice only, will give it a try next time 🙂 If you're interested looking into sauces, there is a fascinating book about it "Sauces" from James Peterson. It's big enough to probably kill an elephant (more than 600 pages…) but this is one of a few books I've read cover to cover.
Hi Gourmantine – thanks for the suggestion… I think very few people really experiment much with sauces, but they can really make (or break) a meal… I can't count the times I've had a meal and it's been good, but the highlight has been the sauce. It's definitely something I'd like to read more about!
So happy to have this post Charles! I have not spent a great deal of time on sauces (even though we thoroughly enjoy them) and my repertoire could certainly use expanding. I love all the whole ingredients you use here and I can just imagine how delicious it tastes. Thanks for the background information too – I always enjoy reading that kind of stuff. The consistency of your hollandaise looks perfect – now I’m craving salmon (and scampi!!)
Thanks Kelly – I'm going to try and work through the other sauces (of course, I've made béchamel quite a few times) but never the others as far as I know. I'd love to have more knowledge of sauces because you can do so much with them! The salmon I had was perfect – I rigged up an improvised steamer… I don't have a proper steamer, so I got one of these big wire mesh discs used to cover frying pans to prevent oil spits, put it over a pan of boiling water, put the fish on and covered with a cake tin (haha)… with the sauce it was soooo good though 😀
Great improvisation for the steamer. In the past, I have thrown a handful of stainless steel cutlery in the bottom of a pan and balanced a shallow bowl on top for a steamer. It did the job but we had to hurry to wash and dry the cutlery to serve the meal! 🙂 Good times.
This is certainly a easy, no fuss Hollandaise Sauce recipe.. Thanks a lot for this Charles :). I can't wait to try it
Thanks Kay – let me know if you give it a shot!
Love salmon; grilled, steamed, whatever it is..and your sauce looks heavenly!:)
Thanks for sharing your saucy-pedia too!!:D
Thanks for your kind comments Christy – it's always fun to try making things which you never made before, and now I have committed the perfect recipe to my head!
Mhmm this sounds so rich and creamy. I've always wanted to make hollandaise, but I thought it was too difficult. You make it look so easy (besides the scrambling egg part). I'm going to give this a try as soon as I find the missing plastic piece to my blender.
Thanks Kyleen – I think you could use a similar technique to make a béarnaise sauce… another favourite of mine… sooooo good with a nice pink steak! 😀 I hope you can give it a go… let me know how it is 🙂
Oh! La! La! is right Charles! Very nicely done. This just looks beautiful. I've never attempted my own Hollandaise before. In fact, I don't know if I've ever had it on fish. I think I've had it on steak. Maybe. So how do you blend while pouring? That I'm curious about.
Hi Kristy – did you really have hollandaise sauce on steak? I'd be surprised… perhaps you're thinking of béarnaise sauce? It's a similar concept – emulsion of egg yolks and butter but it usually has fresh tarragon in it, and the butter is infused with chopped shallots… it's an amazing sauce too… so beautiful with a good steak.
Blending while pouring… haha, that's a good question. Using my left hand I hold the blender and pull it up and down in the sauce. Using my right I slowly drizzle in the butter and also press the butter jug into the top of the sauce jug, pressing down gently. As the sauce thickens it gets harder to blend and the sauce jug can start to fly around all over the place. You might need to get Mr. N to give you a hand pouring the butter while you blend maybe 😉
I have both the hand blender (aka boat motor) and a stand blender but use the latter for making hollandaise. I heat up my butter in the microwave and then pour the butter in a thin stream from the lip of the pyrex measuring cup into the hole at the top of my stand blender lid while the blender is whirring away.
I would probably knock over the cup with the mayonnaise ingredients in it while trying to add the melted butter and insert the hand blender into the cup at the same time. 🙂
looks like a great recipe! I'm trying this the next time I make my favorite eggs benny 🙂
~Melissa
Thanks Melissa – it's really easy, impossible to mess up pretty much. I actually never tried eggs benedict, but I've heard so much about them. I can imagine they're amazing. Definitely something to try in the new year 🙂
well, this is why we should be neighbors. other than our similar taste in music. 😉
best,
M
This looks wonderful. I don't make that many sauces, marinara, some creams, bechamel of course. I usually use Julia's recipe for hollandaise. I really like yours. Great post!
Thanks Greg – yeah, sauces are something I want to get into more. There's a whole world of awesomesauce (haha) out there to explore 🙂
I should copy this sauce recipe. Always useful 🙂
Thanks Kim – hope it works out for you 🙂
Gorgeous looking Hollandaise, Charles! I just checked my kitchen scale to help me turn your 100 grams of butter into American (could just check my blog, but the scale was right here) – that's 3 1/2 ounces or 7 tablespoons. Must get out the blender and whip some up!
Thanks Jean – I've made it my mission to increase the number of sauces I can make from memory ten-fold by this time next year! Well, maybe not 10x, but a *lot* more 🙂
For about 15 years, I thought I was making different kinds of gravies… turns out they were a lot of variations on the mother sauces!
It really is worth expanding your repertoire of sauces; they can make so-so, unimaginative ingredients into a meal that is something extraordinary.
Definitely – I totally agree, and a good sauce can really transform a meal from something ordinary into something spectacular, can't it?!
great tutorial on the types of mother sauces! somehow, luckily, hollandaise has never failed on me (fingers crossed it doesn't ever), so I wouldn't use a blender.. more things to wash haha! but definitely a great tip! if ever anyone worries about not being able to do a hollandaise, I'll direct them here 😉
Thanks Shuhan! Do you make many other types of sauces? I made a béarnaise only one time before and it actually turned out really well, but I'm all in favour of "risk management" 🙂
This is so perfectly detailed! I'm sending this to my daughter in college; she will have no problem at all following along with your steps to a perfect sauce! I love a good hollandaise sauce on my eggs! Ah, all those mother sauce recipes I learned in cooking school!! And to see them here reminds me how I just don't make them often enough!
Oops, realised I never replied to your comment Linda – sorry about that! I hope you daughter enjoys it. It’s an incredibly simple sauce to make, when done this method, and darn impressive too! 🙂
Hi Charles, have just made this sauce to go with salmon, and it was oh so successful!!!! Will never make it any other way as it was really quick. Wonderful post.
Hooray! I’m so pleased you had a chance to try it – I guess in theory it’s possible to make béarnaise sauce the same way maybe… will need to try that next 🙂