30 Second Hollandaise Sauce Recipe (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.

If the butter is too hot, it cooks the egg on contact, also preventing the emulsion. If you add oil too fast, the emulsion breaks. If the egg is too cool, or the butter is too cool, then the yolks also won't emulsify as well. Think of Hollandaise as a sort of hot custard mayonnaise.

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.

Lemon juice or vinegar helps keep the hollandaise from separating and also adds a touch of acidity for flavour. I much prefer white wine vinegar for its flavour. The eggs need to be cooked, so as you'll see, we'll be heating up the butter so it's bubbling (but not burnt).

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.

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.

"But there are a lot of ways things can go wrong. If you don't whisk fast enough or pour in your butter too fast it'll turn greasy and broken. Don't cook the eggs enough and it won't thicken properly. If you cook the eggs too much and you'll end up with clumpy, greasy, scrambled eggs.

Do not eat or drink foods containing raw or undercooked eggs. Examples include homemade eggnog, hollandaise sauce, and undercooked French toast. Eggs should be cooked until they reach 145 degrees F or until the yoke is solid. Pasteurized eggs are available in some grocery stores.

You keep whisking the mixture as you add the melted butter because you want to break it up into tiny, tiny drops. Each tiny drop ends up surrounded by emulsifiers . But to give the emulsifiers a helping hand, you need to keep the butter from gathering in a big glob.

What is the best way to thicken hollandaise sauce? ›

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.

To prevent this, ensure a stable emulsion by slowly incorporating the melted butter into the egg yolk mixture while constantly whisking. Additionally, serving the sauce immediately or keeping it warm, but not too hot, can help maintain its creamy consistency.

If the heat is too high, the egg yolks will curdle and the sauce will become grainy. 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.

Make sure the butter is between 130-140 degrees Fahrenheit (55-60 degrees Celsius). While constantly whisking, add the butter to the sabayon in a steady stream. Add enough butter until you achieve a somewhat thick consistency.

White wine vinegar provides an excellent alternative to lemon juice, but it's worth noting that other citrus options like orange, blood orange, or lime juice can also be used as substitutes. The beauty of these alternatives is that they can impart unique and intriguing flavor profiles to your sauce.

Hollandaise sauce (/hɒlənˈdeɪz/ or /ˈhɒləndeɪz/; French: [ɔlɑ̃dɛz], from French sauce hollandaise meaning “Dutch sauce”) is a mixture of egg yolk, melted butter, and lemon juice (or a white wine or vinegar reduction). It is usually seasoned with salt, and either white pepper or cayenne pepper.

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.