No, Really. This Is an Easy Hollandaise Sauce Recipe! (Hint: It Involves a Blender)
You want to make some eggs benedict at home—but you think that hollandaise sauce is impossible to make yourself, right? Well, actually, with the right recipe, hollandaise can be a total breeze! Seriously. All that it is is a fat-and-water emulsion—the creamy result of forcing egg yolks and lemon juice to merge with butter. OK, but what makes emulsion successful, instead of sad and broken (as so often happens with homemade hollandaise sauce)? The key is breaking the fat molecules up as much as possible, while working very quickly so that the warm butter doesn’t cook and curdle the eggs. Enter the blender! Yes, a whisk is traditional, but a blender takes the risk of a broken or curdled hollandaise sauce basically off the table. Repeat! Blending the hollandaise instead of whisking it basically means that you cannot fail. Modern life—it has its perks! This sauce is so notoriously difficult to make completely by hand that even Julia Child suggests using a blender! If it’s good enough for Julia, it’s good enough for us.
What Is Hollandaise Sauce?
Though it likely originated in the 17th century, hollandaise sauce was crowned as one of the five "mother sauces" of French cuisine in the early 1900s by Escoffier, a French chef whose writings codified and unified French cuisine. A creamy emulsion of egg yolks, enriched with butter and flavored simply with a bit of lemon juice, hollandaise is a sunny, bright, rich sauce that you’ve probably eaten! If you’ve ever had eggs benedict, you’ve probably had hollandaise. But it’s delicious on many things—try this lightly tart, lusciously rich sauce on poached fish, blanched green veggies (it’s heavenly on asparagus), or homemade eggs florentine.
The Best Hollandaise Sauce Ingredients are the Simplest
Some people add fresh herbs or other seasonings to their hollandaise, but we are hollandaise sauce purists. Get creative with how you serve it, sure, but some things are sacred and true French hollandaise sauce is one of them! Keep it super simple, and focus on nailing that perfect, softly yellow, creamy sauce. To make our classic hollandaise sauce recipe, you’ll just need:
Egg yolks
Butter
Fresh lemon juice
How to Make Hollandaise Sauce
Whether you’re making an Easter feast for a huge crowd, or just a special breakfast for two, homemade hollandaise sauce has a way of turning just about any meal or moment into an occasion. It’s just kind of special like that. And once you realize that you really can leave any memories of broken sauces and other various hollandaise-making frustrations well in the past with this easy recipe, you might just find yourself making it on the regular! Here’s how to make the very best hollandaise sauce recipe:
Melt butter.
Combine the room-temperature egg yolks and lemon juice in the blender and blend.
As slowly and steadily as you can, with the blender running, pour the butter into the blender.
Blend until your hollandaise sauce is pale yellow and slightly thick.
You did! You made hollandaise sauce!
Tools You’ll Need
More Easy Sauce Recipes To Try Your Hand At
Getting Saucy
Now that you can make hollandaise sauce from scratch, you can basically conquer the entire world, right?! Well, we sure think so. We hope you make something delicious with your homemade sauce, and when you do, we’d love to hear all about it! Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!
