Easy Creamy Hollandaise Sauce with Garlic
Hollandaise is one of the 5 mother sauces of the French haute cuisine which can be easily altered to produce dozens of other sauces. It’s a simple creamy sauce, made with butter and egg yolks, having an optional addition of lemon juice.
We love using Hollandaise and changing it according to the dishes we serve. The most common and popular combinations for serving Hollandaise is with eggs Benedict, or steamed vegetables. Fish is another popular choice for this sauce.
In this recipe we chose to add some garlic in the sauce in order to serve it with fried fish fillets. The result was amazing! We also used the same sauce with steamed veggies many times and it was a great success.
Many people are reluctant to make Hollandaise at home, because some recipes are a bit complicated. Most recipes are suggesting clarified butter. This means you have to make it, or you have to find some store with Ethnic/Deli food and buy Ghee that’s an Indian version of clarified butter. It’s true that an Hollandaise sauce made with clarified butter has a lighter taste. But this isn’t mandatory for Hollandaise.
You can also use some good quality butter, without melting it and clarifying it first, and the result will be superb! How do we do that? With this recipe we are using a very quick and easy method of making Hollandaise. This way we can have a beautiful creamy sauce for any occasion. If you don’t like garlic, simply omit it, and make a traditional Hollandaise using the same recipe.
Now let’s see how we prepare it!
- 2 egg yolks (large eggs)
-2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
-2 tablespoons water
-100gr/3.5oz (about 7 tablespoons) cold butter, cut in large cubes
-1 garlic clove, minced
Preparation
Pour some water (about 1 inch) in a small pot and place it over high heat (pic.1). Select a metallic bowl that can cover the pot as a lid if placed on it (slightly wider than the pot’s opening). Make sure that the bowl does not touch the water surface. Add the yolks, the lemon juice, the water and the butter in the bowl and set aside (pic.2).
Once the water in the pot starts boiling, turn off the heat. In seconds, the water settles down. Place the bowl on the pot and start whisking vigorously (pic.3). You want to use the steam/vapor from the water under the bowl to cook the sauce. Add the garlic and salt (pic.4). Whisk for a few minutes until the sauce thickens. Serve warm.
1. Make sure that the water has stopped boiling before you place the bowl on the pot. You do not want to overheat the bowl and “cook” the eggs. This is a bain marie cooking method.
2. Do not get anxious if the sauce doesn’t seem to thicken in the first couple of minutes. It will, just keep whisking!
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