Home for the Hollandaise

Hollandaise Sauce Over Poached Eggs

This one was all about conquering my fears. I love Eggs Benedict and it is one of my favorite things to order when going to a restaurant for breakfast. Cooking it myself, however, has been a challenge because it needs a good hollandaise sauce. Over the years I've tried making hollandaise sauce several times with pretty consistent results. I'd end up with either scrambled eggs with a lot of melted butter, a lot of butter with scrambled eggs, or something else that resembled anything but hollaindaise sauce. I'm told that my sauce was "breaking" but, seriously, how can you break a liquid?!? I thought I'd be successful after recording a Food Network episode with Anne Burrel showing a foolproof method of making hollandaise sauce. Yeah, right. It apparently wasn't Jim proof.

Along comes Julia and her magical recipe and instructions in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and voila', the Culinator has conquered hollandaise!! The photos in this post show my first attempt at the sauce but it didn't turn into Eggs Benedict because I didn't think it would actually work -- I tried it on a spur of the moment and it worked. No Canadian bacon and no English muffins so I had to test it out with Kathryn and I using toast and poached eggs (now you know why the main photo isn't Eggs Benedict). Just to prove it wasn't a fluke, however, this past Sunday I made breakfast for lunch and made Eggs Benedict (with English muffins and Canadian bacon) for 7 people and they loved it. I know it was a success because even little ones less than 3 years old ate it willingly and smiled! Sorry Julia, Eggs Benedict isn't French but you certainly made it possible with your poaching and, most importantly, delicious hollandaise sauce.

Now your asking, hopefully, what was the secret? No secret, everything involving French cooking seems to involve butter, right? Here's the deal - using cold butter at two different points in the process makes this work out. First, 3 egg yolks are beaten with a whisk for about a minute in a cold sauce pan until they thicken and get kind of sticky. That's an interesting instruction from Julia -- Aren't egg yolks sticky as soon as they come out of the egg? Then a tablespoon each of cold water and lemon juice are added and beat for another minute.

This is where the magic happens -- a tablespoon of cold butter is added to the yolks but not beaten in, and the saucepan is placed on a very low heat. At this point I needed to keep beating the eggs and after a couple of minutes it turned into a nice and smooth thick cream. The second time I did this I got a little distracted and some of the yolk started to turn into a bit of a scramble egg. Being prepared, thanks to Julia, I had a bowl of cold water nearby and quickly placed the pan into the water to cool it. Then I went back to the heat and everything creamed the way it was supposed to.

Next was the second magic step -- as soon as the yolks have turned into a nice light cream I removed the pan from the heat and added another tablespoon of cold butter. That was then beat into the egg to cool the eggs and stopped them from cooking any further. The final magical step was slowly adding 6 tablespoons of melted butter to the creamy egg yolks. I was more patient than in past attempts and listened to Julia whispering in my head (I don't hear a lot of voices but hers does come in handy!) reminding me to only add about 1/4 teaspoon at a time while continually beating the mixture.

I don't understand the science behind it, I think it has something to do with protein strands absorbing fat, but all that melted butter slowly disappeared into the yolk and I ended up (both times) with most scrumptious hollandaise sauce!! A little lemony, nice and rich and creamy. It could have been a main course as far as I was concerned but I was supposed to share.

By the way, I've described my first batch but the process worked equally well when I doubled the quantity for the larger group.

For any of you health conscious people who are out there enjoying hollandaise sauce -- you'd better stop enjoying it and start feeling guilty. Let's think about the healthy ingredients in enough sauce for 4-6 people used on two Eggs Benedicts: 5 eggs and 8 tablespoons of butter. I'm pretty sure French cooking is not qualifying for any healthy food awards. But it does taste good. It does make me wonder though, how did Julie do one of Julia's recipe's every day for a year and not turn into the Goodyear blimp? Hmmmm, maybe she did? Of course, she may have mastered the art of portion control. Hey, that could be another book: "Mastering the Art of Portion Control." I'm pretty sure I won't be writing that one...

In any case, I hope you'll conquer your fears and make some hollandaise. This opens up a whole set of hollandaise sauces that I'll be trying in the future. I may even try Julia's electric blender version of hollandaise sauce. Intersesting side note -- when making the sauce in a blender it actually uses half the amount of butter because it is supposedly much thicker in addition to being faster to make. I'm a little bit intrigued by Julia's final sentence when describing this method: "But as the technique is well within the capabilities of an 8-year-old child, it has much to recommend it." Hmmm, sound's foolproof to me. What could possibly go wrong?

In the meantime, go make some sauce! Bon Appetit!

P.S. The Eggs Benedict lunch was soooooo good, and we enjoyed it so much, that I forgot to take even a single photo of it!! Maybe next time...