Easy Bearnaise Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients in bearnaise sauce? ›

It is regarded as a "child" of hollandaise sauce. The difference is only in the flavoring: béarnaise uses shallot, black pepper, and tarragon, while hollandaise uses white pepper or a pinch of cayenne. The sauce's name derives from the province of Béarn, France.

To make Béarnaise, you start with a reduction of wine, vinegar, shallots, and tarragon. Set it aside while you make the hollandaise, which is a semi-permanent emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter. Stir the herbal reduction into hollandaise, and voila! You have Béarnaise sauce.

Dry White Wine – Wines like Muscadets and Sauvignon Blancs are best for cooking because they lack sweetness. Chardonnay is dry and creamy on its own, making it a perfect base for a Béarnaise sauce.

Béarnaise instead relies on punchy white wine vinegar, sometimes in concert with fresh lemon. The second major difference is that béarnaise sauce is flavored with sautéed shallots, black pepper, and licorice-like tarragon, occasionally among other fresh herbs.

If your béarnaise is thin and runny, transfer to a large bowl set over a pot of barely simmering water. Whisk constantly and vigorously until sauce is thickened.

What is Béarnaise Sauce? Béarnaise sauce is a delicious and creamy classic French sauce that is often made from a reduction of vinegar and wine mixed with shallots, tarragon, and (sometimes) chervil and thickened with egg yolks and butter. It's typically served with meat, fish, eggs, or vegetables.

Egg yolks and butter. This is what 'thickens' a hollandaise sauce. It's an emulsion sauce. Using anything else will alter the flavour and texture, and not be a true hollandaise.

Hollandaise Sauce

One common hollandaise mistake is overcooking the egg yolks, and there's no coming back from that. But the most common problem is that the emulsion breaks, and you see streaks of liquid butter instead of a uniformly creamy sauce.

Béarnaise Sauce, 6.35 oz at Whole Foods Market.

Does eggs Benedict have hollandaise or bearnaise? ›

Hollandaise is pale yellow, smooth, and creamy. It's often used to to eggs Benedict, asparagus, and fish.

If you're looking for something slightly sweeter, fruity, and well-rounded, try the Pinot Grigio. If you're looking for something with higher acidity levels and a little drier, but still on the lighter side, go with the Sauvignon Blanc.

Light-bodied rice vinegar is among the most versatile white wine vinegar substitutes. Also called rice wine vinegar, it's made from white, brown, or black rice that's fermented until the sugars and starches turn into alcohol and then acetic acid.

Béarnaise sauce is a piquant child of hollandaise, one of the so-called mother sauces of French cuisine. It is simply an emulsification — egg yolks and butter cut through with vinegar flavored with tarragon and shallots, with a bite of black pepper.

To make Béarnaise Sauce, you need: white wine vinegar, white wine, butter (which we clarify – more on this below), egg yolks, tarragon, chervil and eschalots/shallots (the small sweet onions sometimes called French eschalots.)