Hollandaise

I’m not too sure about you, but for me there is something truly great about a delicious Hollandaise sauce.  Now Hollandaise sauce also once known as Dutch sauce is an amazingly rich and buttery sauce that many people around the world love to have with breakfast especially the classic dish of Eggs Benedict or Eggs Norwegian or even the vegetarian friendly Eggs Florentine.  What many people do not realise, is that this incredible sauce is actually one of the five main, or mother sauces that are used around the world to make various other sauces.  For many restaurants and cafés, a good hollandaise is often their pride and joy.  It is the main part of the Benedict that we as chefs, hope you walk away thinking about its flavour and complete awesomeness.  There is always the plain method of making Hollandaise sauce, the more traditional way, but these days with chefs wanting to experiment more, just like a mad scientist, not mentioning names…there are now many different flavours that are used to make this sauce unique.  My personal favourite is either that of a zesty lemon hollandaise or one with a dash of truffle oil to give it that extra special taste.

Even when it comes to the traditional English muffin, it seems as though many people are deciding to even change that up, and have started using a rosti, toasted sourdough bread, or in some cases, even made their own homemade, spiced english muffins.  There isn’t really any right or wrong answer as to how you like to make your Eggs Benedict variation, main thing is that you understand the basic methods, and then just have fun!  I have added may favourite recipe for hollandaise with some of my flavour recommendations:

HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

4 eggs, seperated

400g butter, clarified

5ml salt

Juice from one lemon

Zest from one lemon/5ml truffle oil

To start with, place a pot of water on to simmer.  While it heats up, place the egg yolk into a glass heat proof bowl, if you know your way around a kitchen, you can also use a metal bowl.  Add the lemon juice and the salt.  place over the simmering water and whisk until the egg mixture thickens up and starts to look smooth and velvety.  Turn off the heat.  Once you are at this stage, start to slowly add your butter as you continue to whisking.  Once all of the butter is added, you should have an amazing hollandaise sauce almost ready to eat.  This is where you can now add your lemon zest or your truffle oil, just whisk them in and season with more salt if desired.

Tips:

• If the hollandaise mixture splits, do not throw it away.  Simply get new eggs and start the process again using the split mixture as the butter.
• Streaky bacon is always great choice because of that amazing fat.  Just before the bacon is nice and crispy, brush it with some maple syrup and allow it to caramelize slightly.

If you have any great hollandaise flavour ideas, leave them down below in the comments!