Perfect Hollandaise sauce

If you’d love to make eggs Benedict on top of a slice of our toasted sourdough bread and are keen to cook up this breakfast, brunch or lunchtime treat this weekend, then we’ve some top tips on how to perfect your Hollandaise sauce below.

Ingredients to make the sauce

• 2 free range eggs yolks
• 1 tbsp malt vinegar
• 6-8 black peppercorns
• 200gm clarified butter (which you can make or buy from a supermarket)

Sauce recipe

Place the vinegar and peppercorns in a small frying pan and heat until half the vinegar has evaporated. Remove from the heat & replace this lost fluid with a half a spoon of water.

Sieve this liquid to a mixing bowl, discard peppercorns, then mix the liquid together with the egg yolks and whisk vigorously over a pan of very hot, not boiling, water until the egg thickens to ribbon stage. Lift the whisk over the mixture to see if a trail is left on the surface. Do not overheat this mix as you will end up with scrambled egg!

At this stage, it might be worthwhile getting a second person involved to slowly pour the warm clarified butter in to the egg mix whilst you continue to whisk. This should form what is known as an emulsion. The mixture will continue to thicken and become slightly custard like in texture. As you need to have a slow pouring consistency to your final sauce, you can add a little hot water from the kettle to thin the mixture down slightly.

The sauce may require a little seasoning depending on your taste. Then all that remains is to poach your eggs and toast and butter your bread, serve up your eggs Benedict and enjoy your weekend.