Hollandaise Sauce (Easy and No-Fail) | Downshiftology (2024)

FAQs

How do you make hollandaise sauce not mess up? ›

Add 1 tsp Dijon mustard to your bowl or blender before you add in the eggs. The mustard with stabilize your sauce and will prevent it from separating. If you notice your hollandaise is too thick while whisking or blending, add 1 tbsp of hot water before you sauce has a chance to separate.

Hollandaise sauces are best cooked at temperatures around 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything over this maximum puts this condiment at risk of splitting, which occurs when the creamy, smooth emulsion of the egg yolks, lemon juice, and melted butter breaks. The sauce will separate into pools of fat floating in liquid.

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.

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.

A broken hollandaise sauce is thin with a grainy appearance. The likely causes are overheating, adding the butter too quickly, or adding too much butter. If a sauce seems on the verge of breaking, you'll see oily butter begin to accumulate on the edge of the sauce.

Eggs and risk

Menu items commonly associated with food poisoning are sauces such as mayonnaise, aioli and hollandaise; spreads, such as 'egg butter'; desserts, such as mousse and tiramisu; and drinks, such as eggnog and high-protein smoothies. To handle eggs safely: wash your hands after handling eggs.

While there's risk in eating undercooked meat (rare burgers) and raw egg dishes (Caesar dressing), hollandaise is particularly vulnerable to foodborne illness because the egg yolks aren't fully cooked, and the sauce isn't served hot (eggs should be heated to at least 135 degrees).

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).

Hollandaise should be held between 120F to 145F (49 to 63C) so it does not split or curdle. If the sauce is heated above 150F, the eggs can overcook, become grainy and the sauce can potentially split.

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.

Method. First make the hollandaise sauce. Using a large balloon whisk, beat the egg yolks with a squeeze of lemon juice and seasoning in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Beat vigorously for about 10 minutes until the mixture thickens.

The hardest sauce to master, espagnole, is also called basic brown or Spanish sauce. It is made through the creation of a very dark brown roux, to which veal stock or water is added, along with browned bones, pieces of beef, vegetables, brown sugar and various seasonings.

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.

Because hollandaise is kept warm (and not hot), holding hollandaise at this temperature causes bacteria to rapidly grow, which will contaminate the sauce and make it unsafe to consume, especially if it is held for too long.