How to make Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise today, and it's really pretty simple to do. It's, uh, you— there are recipes out there for blender hollandaise, but I'm gonna make it the old-fashioned way, sort of. Okay, when I was first taught to make hollandaise, it was by clarifying butter and pouring it in and just doing everything precise. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you a little bit easier method for making your hollandaise. And now let's start first by getting our egg yolks ready. So I'm gonna move this over a little bit. My coffee out of the way. I already cracked one. Let me get a, I use this. Let me get another bowl real quick. All right, so the easiest way to do your eggs is just to crack them. And honestly, depending on how much you're doing, you can pour back and forth in the shell. I just like to put it in my hand. I'm just gonna rinse it off real good and get rid of all the whites. I just have yolk. So I'm using 3 egg yolks for this recipe. Let's let Susan in. There she is.

Hi.

Hi, Susan.

How's it— how are you doing?

I'm doing good. Let me make you a co-host here. OK, your co-host. Let me turn you off here. I just getting started.

Oh, good. I had a little technical glitch, of course.

Yeah, you know, it's OK. It happens. Now, this is really a pretty simple sauce. What I'm doing now is I'm just getting my egg yolks ready. And there's not really a lot to make hollandaise.

I love that you can do that. That's so interesting. It's the most awesome way to talk about it.

It is the most efficient way to do it. You don't really fight with the shells and it's just simpler, you know, and I'm not using these whites. I'm not making meringue later. So I always save it and it ends up getting thrown out. So I'm just throwing it out right now.

It's probably the only thing you throw out.

I am telling you, I have to start making meringue because, you know, meringue is really nice in making those little or even make a pavlova. I have never made a pavlova, and probably the day I make one, I'll stop throwing away egg whites.

You know, my daughter has about 6 chickens.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So she's raising chickens. So she's getting— she's getting beautiful eggs every day.

That is such, such a wonderful thing. Fresh eggs. And I was— I actually went to Whole Foods the other day and I found some zucchini blossoms. Which was a big surprise.

I saw that.

They were wonderful. But I also picked up some pastured eggs, and I was explaining to a woman there, she was, she was standing there looking dumbfounded at all the different egg choices. And I said, all right, grass-fed or not grass-fed, free-range doesn't mean anything. I said cage-free doesn't mean anything. He says you got to look for pastured because in cage-free, that might be that there's just a door or free-range, there's just a door on the chicken coop where if the chickens decide to go out, they can. So pastured is the key word. So then she understood. So these are pastured eggs. Let's try— I try to always buy that, you know, but if it can't happen, sometimes you got to buy what you got to buy. So I always tell people, you know, don't beat yourself up about it, but when you can, buy the right stuff. So we're going to start, and I have a double boiler set up, and how I set up my double boilers is always with a stainless steel steel bowl that will fit into a pot without touching the water. Okay, I've got water in here and it's going to cause some steam to come up and it's going to heat my bowl. So this goes in without touching the water and I'm going to get the pot onto a simmer, so not a rolling boil. I don't want it real super hot, I just want it hot enough to let me cook the eggs a little bit carefully. So this is all set to go. Now, this— in the old days, I was saying, we had to build this quite differently. When I went through training and was taught to make it, it was a different way of doing it. So this is not a large portion, and you really don't need a large portion unless you're having a lot of people over and you're making Eggs Benedict, or you're— you want it for something else, because it's not a sauce that you want to hold. You want to use it, make it, and use it within the next 3 or 4 hours. So So we have egg yolks and this is a tablespoon of water. And I'm just gonna move this over a little bit while I squeeze some lemon. You know what?

I mean, let's talk about how many different ways can you use hollandaise? I mean, I think of the two classics, which of course is Eggs Benedict and over asparagus. But other than that, how can you use hollandaise?

Well, you know, you can use it as a sauce. Like one of the classic dishes, and I can't remember the name of it, and I just watched Julia Child make it, was creamed spinach on toast with a poached egg. So, you know, it does involve a poached egg as well, but that is, I forget the French name for that, but that is like a classical French dish. And then with a gob of hollandaise over. So while hollandaise is not a sauce you'll make all the time, but it's a sauce that will kind of really liven up a dish. This would be really good. Like, I used to make a veal Oscar back in the old days, and you don't have to make it with veal. You can make it with chicken. You can make it with seafood. This was the topping. The hollandaise was the topping over top the final part of the Oscar to richen the sauce. So, and then the other classical thing is if you like filet, instead of making a hollandaise, you make a béarnaise.

Okay, now here's a crazy question. Can you use Hollandaise with fish.

Yeah. Yeah, that one I would make us like a flounder Oscar or some other kind of fish Oscar. I would use the Hollandaise on that. It goes well. The béarnaise, I guess if you like tarragon is the whole key. I don't make béarnaise because I don't like tarragon.

So tarragon is my favorite.

I know people love it. And it's just like, there's a couple flavors that I just don't like, and tarragon is one of them. I'll have to make it again.

You have to— you know what you have to make it in? Trust me on this. Make it in a chicken salad. Okay, make chicken salad, you know, with mayo and whatever you put in it. You know, I put like grapes or apple and celery and whatever. Add tarragon, it'll be— it'll transform your palate.

Well, I'm putting in right now, I put in my tablespoon of water and I put in a tablespoon and about a teaspoon of lemon juice, and I'm going to withhold the rest of my lemon juice just in case I need it. I don't want to hit it all at one time in case it's too lemony.

Mm-hmm.

And then we're going to put in a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and some black pepper. Now, this is where the difference was on how I was trained to make it and how I make it now. So we're gonna whip this all up and get it prepared. And then we have softened butter. I'm actually gonna put one softened butter in here now. And this is kind of helping you from making scrambled eggs by adding it in at this point. Because when I was trained classically, this would've gone over the water, I'd have whipped it up and whipped it up and whipped it up. And then I would've poured very carefully clarified butter into this mixture. Okay, so it's not emulsifying quite as well as it should because it's not really hot. So now I'm going to turn this on, put it over the heat, and we're going to start the process.

But who has time to make the clarified butter?

Well, you know, that's the whole thing. And Julia Child didn't, so I figured, God, if Julia doesn't have to do it, why should I?

Makes sense.

So, but I mean, when I was first trained, that was exactly how I was taught to do it though. So the big thing here is not letting these eggs cook. Until this butter melts, I'm not going to have a real good time of seeing it.

So you're threading the needle between not letting the eggs cook and softening and melting the butter. I love drama, drama.

Drama, yeah, that's me. I'm all about drama. But anyway, you know, a hollandaise, like I said, it's not a sauce you're going to make all the time, but it's a sauce when you do pull it out, it's going to be a lovely thing.

Yeah, I mean, it, you know, it elevates the entire dish. And, you know, someone asked before, Rev. Noreen asked if you can use it on salmon. To me, that seems like, yeah, I think it would work well with salmon.

It's got a nice flavor. You might even want to add in just a little bit of mustard into this as you're making.

Nice.

I, you know, I've never done that, but I don't see why you couldn't. I would put it in at the very end. I wouldn't put it in— okay, now the butter's melting. So we're going to let these whip up really good, and it's just kind of like when we made tiramisu. Remember how I had to get the eggs hot without getting them over hot? And now I'm boiling I want to take it off and don't be afraid to take it off and I'm going to turn it down low to us, probably to 2 on this. So it's not extremely low, but it's low enough. And then we're just going to whip.

So let me ask you, are the eggs actually— I guess they're actually cooking.

Yes. Okay.

So they'll be safe, obviously.

They're safe. And the other reason to use organic and pastured eggs is because a lot of times those eggs just are a little— you know, I don't want to make the assumption that they're safer to begin with, but it seems to me that you have less chance of getting sick with organic pastured eggs only because I think they're handled better, they're fresher, whereas a storage egg, you know, then you really have to be careful.

Makes sense.

Yeah. So this is— and again, you know, if you think you're getting hot, You just take the bowl up. This is why I like this bowl so much. That and the fact is there's no corners, you know, it's round, so I can get in really, really easily. And I actually bought a little, a lighter wire whip that I was hoping would be more flexible, but it's not really any more flexible. You need like a balloon whip. It kind of moves a little more with the wrist motion, so you get a little more whip with it.

Let me also ask you, Can you chop up some herbs very fine? Can you put thyme into it? Say very fine.

I, you know, I have never seen that, which doesn't mean that you can't. Just means I haven't seen it. So what I would say then is to put it in the reduction kind of like you were going to make a béarnaise, whereas you would start with like with a béarnaise, you would start with a quarter cup of vinegar and a quarter cup of either a white wine or dry vermouth. So one of those two you could change out. Like, if you didn't want to use vinegar, if you weren't going that way, you could use water. I would use wine as the other part of it though. And then what you want to do is put your herbs in that with seasonings and reduce it to the couple of tablespoons that you would have added into the lemon juice.

I think that's what I was thinking of. I think I was thinking of a béarnaise.

So you want to make what, you know, whatever flavors you want to add into it. And that would be an interesting experiment to do, to make different flavors to see how they would come out. But you want to make them in the reduction. So you want to, you want to boil them off, let them reduce, and then use them as you would the lemon juice and the water. You don't want to add them in addition. So what I'm doing right now is setting the stage to make the hollandaise. So at that point, you know, you would have put in the reduction in here with the egg yolks and do what I'm doing now.

Okay, so is that getting thicker?

Yes, it is. You can't really see it right now, but yeah, it's starting to get thicker.

You can tell. Yeah, I thought so.

And as soon as it thickens a little bit more, then I'm going to start adding the butter into it. And again, don't be afraid to pick it up. And you can also, if you think it's cooking too fast, you can have an ice bath, like some ice water nearby, and just set the bowl in the ice water. That's thickening up kind of nice right now. So this is when we're going to start to put the butter in. Okay, so you're going to get this. You can see the bottom of the pan through with some streaks in it, which is what I'm getting now. Okay, it's thick enough. So turn this off. Let's move this over and move my butter over. I've gotten it out to try and soften it up a little bit more because together it stays a little more firm, but when you soften it up, when you move it out, it'll soften up a little quicker. That's just a little bit more for you. There we go. Okay, so now I'm just going to start putting butter in and whipping up butter. Now this does take quite a bit of butter, but you don't want to put it all in at one time. Just like— and this is— see, I'm not clarifying it. That was always one of the things that people wanted to know about clarifying, was you're removing water from it, so it's supposed to make a better sauce. But this just seems so much easier to me.

Yeah, it looks it. And how many 1-tablespoon pats of butter will you put in?

I'm going to be putting in about— I'm going to put in 6 to 8 tablespoons of butter. Or no, not— I'm sorry, 6 to 8 ounces of butter, not tablespoons. 6 to 8 ounces of butter. So a stick and a half, about.

Okay.

So this is a butter sauce. I mean, it's a butter and egg sauce. So I'm going to start, just keep putting them in, and you'll see it starting to emulsify a little bit more. And people always ask, you know, well, when do you know you've had enough butter in it? When I was using liquid butter, it would start to break just a little bit. And if it should ever start to break on you just a little bit, add an ice cube, a very small ice cube, in it or a little bit of very ice cold water, it'll help bring it back. Now that's not going to be a long-term fix. So that would be, say I'm going to serve it and it starts to break. So that would be a short-term fix to get it. And oh, thank you so much for sharing, for tweeting that out. And the rest of you, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate you tweeting out, tell a little bird that we're in here. And I'm just putting it back over the heat briefly. Just as it starts to stiffen up because the butter is chilling it off a bit. Okay, put some more in. Yeah, the pan is still good and hot. It's starting to thicken up very nicely. And if you don't want to see those black specks in there, you can use white pepper.

Okay, good idea.

Good thing you can't really see them through this, but I just have never been a big fan of white pepper. And again, it's a personal taste, nothing else. So I just don't think it has that peppery bite black pepper has. And to me, it's pepper. So why, you know, it tastes like pepper.

Okay. So here's one of my wacky questions. Yes. That I like to do. Is there any place for wine in the hollandaise sauce in the formula?

Yeah, when we were making a béarnaise, yes. So you could replace the water with some wine. I honestly have never done that, so I don't know how that would be. But if you were making—

it's more for béarnaise.

Yeah, or if you were going to do another herbal reduction like we talked about using thyme, or maybe a basil hollandaise, yeah, then you could use wine or dry vermouth. Julia preferred dry vermouth, but that again was her preference. And I had to watch the video of her doing it this morning, and I had forgotten how much I love Julia Child. She is just amazing.

Oh, she is.

Or was, yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah.

But yeah, she had a good run with Jacques Pépin towards the end.

Yeah.

And had a really great time with food. And Jacques loved her too.

No, I bought a lot of her cookbooks as a young, you know, a young wife, you know, when I was first married, as so many did and do.

Yeah, they're still relevant. They're still good cookbooks. I'm just going to taste this. Okay. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's just about there. It doesn't need any more lemon juice or salt.

Well, I wonder what that is like mixed in with certain vegetables. Like you mentioned spinach. I, what are the other vegetables you can mix it in with?

Well, I wouldn't necessarily mix it in the spinach. The spinach was creamed. So you made a little bit of a cream sauce and then topped the egg with a glorious portion of hollandaise. So it still had the egg on it. Now you could, I've seen hollandaise on broccoli. You can put hollandaise on cauliflower. No, it's an egg. It's, for all intents and purposes, it's like a custard, basically.

Yeah.

You don't have any dairy in it. So this is a stick. Let me get a spoon so you can really appreciate it.

But you know, we're all about adapting and finding new ways to use things. So, oh, look at that.

Wrong way. That's why— there we go. Okay, so it's not super thick. It could be a little bit thicker. This is a little— just a little runny. So I mean, I could put it just a little bit over the heat a little more and tighten it up. It's also going to thicken a little bit more as it cools and sits. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. The flavor is what's important.

That looks— that looks perfect.

Flavor is very good. And at this point, the other item that people put in here is cayenne.

You know, I was going to ask you about a hot sauce or something.

Cayenne, to me, can get away at people really, really fast. So I try not to tell people to use cayenne because it is so strong. And I honestly don't have cayenne in the house for that reason, but I'm going to put in just a drop of hot sauce, which I can control a little bit more. I know how much heat is in here. I'm just going to add a little bit of that in instead of adding in cayenne.

I would love to know from our viewers what, what else do you think Hollandaise sauce would be good to— what types of foods that are different we don't normally associate? Hollandaise with that we could start with.

That's lovely. And of course, if you want to put some herbs in now, you know, you could put some herbs in if you wanted to. If you want to add a little bit of your own touch or flavor to it, you could chop some fresh herbs in here and add it to it while it sits and let the flavor kind of permeate through it. So again, you know, don't— it's your sauce, you know, just because it's not classically made that way don't be afraid to have fun with it. And you saw how fast it was. How many minutes? All right. Took us about 20 minutes to make this. It is a little more intensive. And again, it's not something you're going to make all the time. Now, at this point, this sauce, you would not want to keep hot, hot, hot. You want to put it in something, keep it out of the cold, put it over, maybe put a little pan with some water in it that might catch some indirect heat from your stove if you're still cooking. And set it in that and just let it stay warm. Let it stay room temperature. Doesn't have to be hot when you serve it.

You took the words right out of my mouth. That's what I was going to ask you. Does it have to be— do you serve it at a certain temperature?

The eggs are hot. I mean, cooked. The eggs are cooked. So, you know, once it's cooked, you've got a 3 to 4 hour window where it's safe. All right. So you're— and you're not going to run into problems. So that's, you know, that's something that you make. Say you got a dinner party at 7. 5 o'clock before your guests come, before you get your shower and get ready for it, go make your hollandaise, put it on the side of the stove. 5:30, go get ready and then keep completing your dinner. So it's out of the way, it's done, and you can move on. Oh, and I didn't