Corduroy Orange

Hollandaise—it’s not just for asparagus and eggs benedict anymore

In its essence, hollandaise is a very simple sauce, consisting of little more than egg yolks and melted butter seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice. Because it is so simple, the results of your sauce rely in large part upon technique. Made incorrectly, the hollandaise will break and greasy butter will float upon slightly scrambled eggs. Fortunately, there is a never-fail technique that takes advantage of modern technology to get perfect results every time.

The classical method of preparing hollandaise sauce is, quite frankly, a pain in the arse. For starters, it calls for clarified butter, which is melted butter with the milk solids skimmed off of it. It’s the sort of thing a restaurant kitchen is apt to have on hand (especially if they serve hollandaise or one of its variations), but not the sort of thing that a cook at home is very likely to have. Quite honestly, there’s little reason to worry about it becuase plain old melted butter works just as well and has a bit more flavor to it.

In addition to requiring that nitpicky ingredient, classically made hollandaise requires you to whip your egg yolks to thick consistency in a stainless steel bowl over boiling water, then remove the pan from the heat and whisk your buttter into it. I have a couple of complaints about making it like this: it makes your forearm burn with all the whisking (especially if you’re making a restaurant-sized batch), and it’s often tough not to scramble the eggs.

Instead, if I make hollandaise sauce (and in the interests of full disclsure, this is the mother sauce I make least often), I’ll use my blender to do it.

• 3 egg yolks
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• healthy pinch of kosher salt
• about half as much cayenne pepper
• 1 stick of butter, melted

Combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in the blender and stir them together briefly to approximate the process of whisking the egg yolks in the classical method. With the blender on a low speed, take the little button thing out of its top and slowly pour the melted butter into the blender to emulsify into a sauce. Serve immediately.

Food safety experts will caution you against using regular egg yolks because the egg yolks aren’t cooked and they carry the risk of salmonella poisoning. This is a valid concern if you’re using supermarket eggs. If you’re lucky enough to know the farm where your eggs come from and know for a fact that they come from healthy chickens who have a yard to roam, the risk is greatly reduced (though not eliminated) as compared to eggs from a nameless factory who-knows-where. The nameless factory concern applies even to supermarket eggs labeled free-range and organic because USDA regulations permit such labeling even if the hens are kept confined much of the time and only given rec-yard priveleges a few hours per day. Thus, if you have small children, elderly people, or individuals with compromised immune systems in your home, it may be worth purchasing pasteurized eggs or pasteurized egg yolks (in a carton) for the purpose of making this sauce.

Variations on hollandaise sauce:

• Sauce Maltaise: to the finished hollandaise sauce, add a couple of tablespoons of blood orange juice and (optionally), about a half teaspoon of the orange’s grated zest. Classically, this is served with asparagus.
• Mousseline: whip 1/4 cup of heavy cream and fold the hollandaise sauce into it. This makes a much lighter, fluffier sauce that goes well with poached eggs (as in a variation on the basic eggs benedict) or with a poached fish.
• Bearnaise is a standard accompaniment to a grilled steak. To make it, boil together 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon tarragon, a teaspoon of minced shallots, and a healthy portion of freshly cracked black pepper until greatly reduced (almost dry) and add the mixture to the finished hollandaise sauce. Feel free to substitute wine (white or red, depending on what you’ll be serving the sauce with) for the white wine vinegar.
• Choron is a variation on bearnaise in which you include about a tablespoon of tomato paste with the vinegar-tarragon reduction.
• Hollandaise Corduroy Orange: substitute lime juice for lemon juice in the basic hollandaise preparation.
• If you would like to substitute other citrus juices for the lemon juice in basic hollandaise, it’s a good idea to reduce them by about half first, because the acid content of lemon juice is significantly greater than that of orange or grapefruit.

Hollandaise tends only to be used in a certain number of prescribed situations (asparagus, poached eggs, poached fish, and [occasionally] bearnaise with steak), but there’s no reason why you can’t use it with more items. It goes pretty well with other vegetables, like broccoli and cauliflower; it tastes pretty good with ham, so there’s really no reason why it wouldn’t match up with a pork chop; and for that matter, why not do a variation on bearnaise where you use mint instead of tarragon and serve it with lamb? Eggs and butter make a tasty, rich sauce and if we box ourselves into only using it occasionally, it’s our own fault. If you have any sugggestions for how you like to use hollandaise, please post a comment and help increase the versatility of this little-used sauce.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Cooking Tips, Recipes, Sustainable Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.