This Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce is the Star of Your Brunch at Home (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.

The friction in the blender heats the coddled egg yolks and essentially cooks them – plus the acid in the lemon juice and the hot butter also make this sauce completely safe to eat.

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.

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan. Place the egg yolks, lemon juice, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 3/4 teaspoon pepper and cayenne in the jar of a blender. Blend for 15 seconds. With the blender running, slowly pour the hot butter into the blender and blend for 30 seconds, until the sauce is thick.

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.

Hollandaise is an emulsified sauce in which egg yolks serve as both the emulsifier, and the thickening agent. The finale consistency of your sauce will be determined by how much fat is emulsified in and how much the egg yolks are cooked. The more you cook the egg yolks, the thicker your hollandaise will be.

Hollandaise Sauce

One common hollandaise mistake is overcooking the egg yolks, and there's no coming back from that. But the most common problem is that the emulsion breaks, and you see streaks of liquid butter instead of a uniformly creamy sauce.

The second cause is either adding too much butter or adding it too quickly. When either of these occur, the sauce will look glossy like icing and pull away from the sides of the bowl, while the butter will float on top of the mixture.

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.

Does butter have to be clarified for hollandaise? ›

When making hollandaise, some chefs prefer to use clarified butter which is straight butter fat. In order to take advantage of the flavors in butter's milk solids and whey, some chefs prefer to use whole butter.

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.

The butter breaks into minute droplets, while the egg yolk acts as an emulsifier, helping to keep those droplets dispersed, as well as thickening the sauce. What you get is a creamy, smooth sauce with a rich texture and mild flavor, perfect for topping eggs, fish, or vegetables.