Classic Hollandaise Recipe

You can add the art of sauce-making to your culinary repertoire by learning how to make hollandaise sauce, a rich and tangy “mother” sauce you can later expand upon.

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by AdobeStock/ricka_kinamoto
Traditional basic sauces. French cuisine. Hollandaise sauce in a metal saucepan, with ingredients for cooking - eggs, butter, lemons. On a black stone table. Copy space top view
20 minutes DURATION
15 COOK TIME
5 PREP TIME

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tbsp cold water
  • 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • Pinch of kosher salt
  • Pinch of sugar (optional; see Step 4)
  • 2 tbsp cold butter, divided
  • 6 to 8 ounces (1 1/2 to 2 sticks) melted butter
  • Salt and cayenne, to taste

Directions

  • Prepare a faux double boiler (unless you have the real thing). Choose a stainless steel or heat-proof glass bowl that will nestle into one of your saucepans with room in the pan for an inch or two of water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch the water.
  • Separate 3 eggs. You’ll only need the yolks, but the whites will freeze well for later use, or you can turn them into a simple egg white omelet in the next day or so. Be careful to remove as much of the whites as possible. The yolks contain the stabilizing agent that will keep your sauce in tasty suspension; the whites don’t. (For a more detailed explanation of the emulsification process that keeps everyone playing nicely in a warm bath of hollandaise, visit Science of Eggs.)
  • Whisk the cold water and the egg yolks vigorously in your bowl, until the yolks lighten in color and feel. This step helps unwind the proteins in the egg, which will help them relax and prevent curdling later when they meet an acid (lemon juice).
  • Whisk in the lemon juice and salt. Optional: At this point, you can also whisk in a pinch of sugar if you like, because sugar messes with egg yolks’ ability to curdle. Adding it is akin to hiring help, however, and is not part of the classic mother sauce tradition.
  • Bring 1 to 2 inches of water to a boil in the saucepan, then reduce to a heat high enough to keep the water simmering but low enough to prevent eggs from scrambling (about medium-low).
  • Add a tablespoon of cold butter to the egg yolk mixture, then place the bowl over the saucepan. Whisk without ceasing for several minutes, until the mixture leaves streaks on the bottom of the bowl and is as thick as heavy cream. It is important to whisk continuously to encourage an even dispersion of ingredients and prevent the butterfat from hanging out in a clump.
  • Remove from heat and whisk in another tablespoon of cold butter immediately. This will cool down the yolks.
  • Now, carefully, while whisking the mixture, begin to beat in tiny droplets of melted butter. How big is a droplet, you ask? About a fourth of a teaspoon and no more. We’re talking tiny! It is most important to add melted butter very slowly at first. Then you can be a bit more generous with the droplets or pour in a slow stream of butter as you whisk and the mixture begins to thicken into a sauce.
  • Season the sauce with cayenne and a bit more lemon juice and salt, if you like. At this stage, you can mix in other spices or a flavorful stock for an even more complex flavor.
  • Always serve hollandaise sauce warm, and keep it warm (not hot) in a thermos or a pan near a warm burner.
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Can you freeze hollandaise sauce? Use up your surplus eggs with this classic hollandaise recipe. Serve some now, and learn how to preserve the rest for later.

According to Julia Child, “Sauces are the splendor and glory of French cooking.” Ever practical, the force behind bringing the splendor of French cooking to the masses also believed that one of sauce’s most useful functions is “to make an interesting dish out of something simple.” Hollandaise sauce is rich, tangy, and fancifies the simple foods it’s served with, which most often include English muffins, eggs, asparagus and artichokes.

Although a list of French sauces could go on and on, they can actually be divided into just a few families, with hollandaise being a “mother” sauce — the mother of the egg yolk-and-butter sauces, to be exact.

You may have heard that it’s tricky to make hollandaise sauce, and that’s true. An egg yolk will hold a certain number of fat droplets in suspension — this is called a “colloid” — until it can’t hold any more, at which point it “breaks.” The most delicious hollandaise sauces contain a maximum of butter, but starting with a minimum will help you achieve success. You can actually make hollandaise in a blender without fail (see Blender Hollandaise to learn how), but that method won’t allow you to use the maximum amount of butter, nor will it teach you how to make a mother sauce that you can later expand upon.

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