Easy Hollandaise Sauce Recipe - Budget Bytes (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.

One common hollandaise mistake is overcooking the egg yolks, and there's no coming back from that. But the most common problem is that the emulsion breaks, and you see streaks of liquid butter instead of a uniformly creamy sauce.

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.

In a blender, combine egg yolks, water, lemon juice, and salt; blend until frothy. Heat butter in the microwave or in a small saucepan over medium until bubbly (do not let brown). With blender running, pour in hot butter in a very thin stream, blending until sauce is thick and emulsified.

Traditional hollandaise, made by emulsifying melted clarified butter into egg yolks and lemon juice, is notoriously difficult to make. You not only have to take the same care in its construction as you take for oil-in-egg-yolk mayonnaise, but you also have to deal with the fickle nature of hot eggs and butter.

Raw eggs are used in homemade versions of foods such as mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce. Unpasteurized dairy products. Unpasteurized milk and milk products — sometimes called raw milk — may be contaminated with salmonella. The pasteurization process kills harmful bacteria, including salmonella.

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.

It's what happens next that sets them apart: Hollandaise gets its acidity from lemon juice (sometimes vinegar) and is usually seasoned with salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper. Béarnaise, meanwhile, builds upon hollandaise with white wine vinegar, shallots, tarragon, and other fresh herbs.

What is broken hollandaise sauce? ›

When a sauce splits, this means that the fat has separated from the egg foam (the sauce has lost its emulsion). The result will look thin, greasy, and lumpy.

What do I do if my hollandaise sauce is too lemony? You can either start again, or try adding another egg yolk and a bit more melted butter.

This generally happens because the melted butter is added too quickly so that the eggs, which act to emulsify the fat and liquid, cannot keep up. When making a hollandaise you should whisk the butter into your sauce in a very slow drizzle, especially at the beginning.

When adding your butter to the egg yolks, make sure that it is warm (about 130°F/55°C) but not hot. If your clarified butter is too hot it will instantly curdle your egg yolks.

As a hot egg- emulsified butter sauce its appearance at its best is glossy and smooth. 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.

Hollandaise is an emulsified sauce in which egg yolks serve as both the emulsifier, and the thickening agent. The finale consistency of your sauce will be determined by how much fat is emulsified in and how much the egg yolks are cooked. The more you cook the egg yolks, the thicker your hollandaise will be.

Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise is a tangy, buttery sauce made by slowly whisking clarified butter into warm egg yolks. So the liquid here is the clarified butter and the thickening agent is the egg yolks.