Hollandaise Sauce

I love hollandaise sauce but I'm not too crazy about making it. Worrying about the butter, the eggs, all that stirring — ahhhhhh! I just get scrambled eggs in the end, anyway (if you do, just put the sauce through a sieve). And frankly, anything requiring a double boiler turns me off. That's why I was so ecstatic at finding this recipe on the BBC Food site. The eggs never go near the stove. Absolute genius. The recipe is by Holly Jones and requires a food processor. At the moment, I am without one :( so I used an ancient Braun hand held blender and it worked out fine. I cannot begin to tell you how easy this recipe is. Good bye, Julia Child.

Ingredients
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
6 peppercorns
1 dried bay leaf
2 eggs, yolks only
125g/4oz butter
lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Put the vinegar in a small pan with the peppercorns and bay leaf. Reduce the vinegar over a high heat until there is only 1 tbsp left. Strain the peppercorns and the bay leaf from this reduction.
2. Put the egg yolks in a food processor with the vinegar reduction.
3. Gently melt the butter so that the butter solids fall to the bottom of the saucepan.
4. Turn the food processor on and slowly pour the butter on to the egg yolks with the motor still running. The sauce will start to thicken. When only the butter solids are left, stop.
5. If the sauce is too thick, add a little hot water.
6. Season to taste with salt and pepper and a little lemon juice.

If you want to link directly to the BBC site, click here. The BBC food site is pretty good. I love their print option because there isn't the advertising junk you get with epicurious.com or NYT so the recipe prints out with a very clean look (and you use less paper), but you do get a picture. I always think it's nice to have a picture with the recipe.