★ Why You’ll Love this Recipe ★
Hollandaise sauce. It's what makes breakfast more beautiful (and way more delicious). Great on the Classic Eggs Benedict or try my Eggs Benedict Croissant Casserole. Truly any egg dish is made better with a drizzle of Hollandaise.
How to Make Hollandaise Sauce
It's easier than you think.
If you can use a whisk, you can make this sauce. It takes less than 10 minutes!
Gourmet, at Home
You don't have to go to a fancy restaurant to get a delicious hollandaise sauce or Eggs Benedict, you can make your own homemade hollandaise sauce anytime you want.
Fancy French cuisine doesn't have to be hard. I'll walk you through each simple step to make this delicious sauce. Then you'll be putting it on everything!
Try it on other foods, too.
Hollandaise sauce is a tangy, silky topping for just about anything. It's best known served over Eggs Benedict but you can also enjoy it over vegetables, chicken and waffles, steak, salmon, and more! It's an easy, creamy and lemony sauce to add to any dish that could use extra moisture and richness.
Simplified Method
I've taken all the complications out of this recipe and made it as simple and straightforward as possible. No fancy equipment required. Even if you don't have a whisk, you can use a fork.
Feel free to customize.
Add little ingredients to make it your own and further complement the dish you're serving it with.
Some people like to add a little bit of mustard, some use a small amount of hot sauce or a pinch of cayenne pepper, and some like to use lime juice in place of the fresh lemon juice.
★ Ingredients You'll Need ★
Simple pantry and refrigerator staples make up this easy, buttery sauce. You likely won't even need to make a trip to the store for anything special.
Here's everything you need:
- Egg yolks. You will only need the yolks for this recipe, so save the whites for something else or go ahead and add them to breakfast.
- Butter. I use salted butter for just about everything because it's easy. However, if you want more control over the amount of salt you add to this sauce, go with unsalted and add in your own salt to taste. One thing to note is that salted butter does have a higher water content so it isn't quite as creamy as unsalted.
- Lemon juice. Feshly squeezed lemon juice is going to give you much more flavor than buying lemon juice. If you have to use bottled, make it a last resort. It's not nearly as flavorful and doesn't add the same brightness that fresh juice will.
- Milk or half and half: Half and half will give you a more rich flavor and texture but if you don't have any or prefer a lighter sauce, milk will work too. The higher percentage of fat the creamier your sauce will be.
- Cayenne pepper. Adding a pinch of cayenne pepper goes a long way. Stir it into to your finished sauce or use it to garnish your dish. This adds color and flavor to the sauce.
★ How to Make Hollandaise Sauce ★
Just follow these simple steps!
- Melt butter in a pan on the stove. Keep the heat low, you don't want to accidentally brown it, just melt it.
- Add egg yolks, lemon juice, and milk or half and half to the melted butter and whisk until thick and frothy. Immediately remove from heat.
It is very important to whisk non-stop while this sauce is cooking or the sauce can cook unevenly and become lumpy.
It's also important to remove the pan from heat. Do not turn off the burner or it will continue to cook and sauce may become chunky. - Finally, add cayenne pepper and serve immediately.
★ Alternate Cooking Methods ★
Traditional Double Boiling Method
This is probably he most commonly accepted way to make Hollandiase sauce and what they teach you in culinary school. It involves using a proper double boiler, or placing a large metal bowl over top of a sauce pan about ⅛ of the way full of water. The water in the sauce pan boils and heats up the metal bowl. You place your eggs, butter, milk and lemon juice into the bowl and whisk. You need to use a bowl that is wider than the sauce pan.
Microwave Method
Yes you can make Hollandaise sauce in the microwave! See below for instructions.
If you're feeling confident with your ability to make the stovetop version of this sauce, you might be ready to try the microwave shortcut.
Wait. You can really use the microwave to make this sauce? Yes. The mircowave has long been used to cook breakfast foods from eggs to bacon. So, yes, you really can actually make Hollandaise sauce entirely in the microwave.
All you have to do it combine the melted butter (so microwave the butter first by itself) with lemon juice, whisked eggs, warm water or milk and cayenne pepper in a glass bowl. Then microwave in 15 second increments, whisking in between. For about 30-45 seconds until it's thick.
Side note: You can also melt chocolate using this same method!
The microwave method gets a little tedious with all the stopping and starting so that's why I settled on the sauce pan method as my preferred way to make Hollandaise sauce. The stove top method is how this recipe is written.
Stovetop Method
Just use a sauce pan. This is how I do it. I have a double boiler, but it's more dishes to wash later. Just be sure to use low heat, stir, and allow time for the sauce to thicken.
★ Tips for Success ★
The key to make Hollandiase Sauce without lumps is whisking continuously.
No matter your method.
When using the microwave you will heat and stir, heat and stir. You can use a whisk or a fork.
The 3 keys to success when cooking stove top Hollandaise sauce.
- Cooking over low heat. You want to cook this sauce slowly, over very low heat or the eggs will cook too fast and become chunky. You want the eggs to cook just enough for the sauce to thicken, but you don't to cook this egg-based sauce so long that it turns into scrambled eggs.
- Whisk constantly. Don't stop whisking. Whisking does two things: 1.) It keep the eggs from clumping together. 2.) It allows you to feel the sauce thicken so you can tell when it's ready.
- Do not overcook. As soon as the sauce starts to thicken, remove it from the heat. It's done. If you keep cooking it or keep it over heat, it will overcook and become too thick and more like scrambled eggs and no longer s sauce. Once you overcook the eggs in the sauce, there's no way to get them back to their original smooth and more liquid state.
- Once you feel the sauce thicken as you are whisking, remove the sauce from heat, stir for another 30 seconds or so to release some heat so it doesn't continue cooking. Then use your Hollandaise sauce immediately. Or, keep a lid on it until ready to use so the top does not dry out and form a layer you'd need to skim off.
★ FAQs ★
★ More Recipes You'll Love ★
Hollandaise & Eggs Benedict
Be sure to try my Eggs Benedict Casserole topped with this sauce!
Or if the more traditional Eggs Benedict is your style, check out my classic Eggs Benedict recipe.
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Homemade Hollandaise Sauce
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter (1 stick)
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice more or less to taste
- 2-3 tablespoon milk or half and half
Optional
- dash cayenne pepper
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Instructions
- Melt butter. In a sauce pan, over medium heat, melt the stick of butter.
- Add yolks, lemon juice and milk.Whisk continually for about 3-5 minutes or until sauce starts to get thick and frothy then remove from heat.
- Season. Finally sprinkle and stir in cayenne pepper (if desired) and serve immediately.
Video
Notes
- Use salted butter, or if you want to control the amount of salt, use unsalted and add your own salt to taste.
- Feel free to adjust the amount of lemon juice to make your sauce more or less tangy.
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Annette Reule says
For 25 years hollandaise sauce was my kryptonite. This recipe I never miss. Thank you so so much!