How to Make Hollandaise Sauce

Who doesn’t love hollandaise sauce? It’s so delicious and it is much easier to make from scratch than most people think. Give it a try, the next time you would like a nice sauce for your veggies, fish or eggs! It is also a great way to impress friends and family with your cooking skills!

Directions:

Yield: approx. 1 cup

1. For the best results, watch the instructional video below.
2. Important note: When making hollandaise sauce, we do not want to cook the egg yolks. This means that throughout this process, make sure the ingredients do not get hot enough to cook the yolks. As well, because we are not cooking the yolks, you have to keep the sauce below 140°F. This means that if your sauce sits for too long you run the risk of food poisoning. Do not let hollandaise sauce sit for more than an hour and a half! After that time discard any unused sauce.
3. Place the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Melting the butter over low heat will cause the butter to separate. The milk solids will sink to the bottom of your saucepan. This process is called clarifying butter.
4. Pour the butter slowly into a measuring cup, leaving the milk solids in the pan. When you clarify the 3/4 of a pound of butter, you should end up with about 1/2 pound of clarified butter.
5. Place a large saucepan, about half full of hot tap water on the stove. Do not turn on the burner! We are only putting the saucepan on the burner so that we have a stable base to support when we are whisking our sauce.
6. Put the three egg yolks in a stainless steal bowl. Place this bowl over top of the pan of hot water.
7. Add the cold water and a couple drops of lemon juice to the egg yolks and whisk together. The egg yolks will start to thicken. If you notice they are thickening too much, add a little bit of lemon juice.
8. When you are whisking the egg yolks you want to reach the ribbon stage. You will know you have reached this stage when the whisk starts to leave a trail behind it that remains visible for a short while.
9. Now that the eggs are whipped together with our water and lemon juice, it is time to add the clarified butter. It is important to add the butter slowly! Common mistakes people make are adding too much butter at a time and too much butter in relation to the egg yolks. The three egg yolks we used will hold at most 1/2 pound of butter before the sauce breaks.
10. As before, if your sauce gets too thick, add a couple more drops of lemon juice.