1,497 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

Béarnaise sauce

This very tasty sauce, flavoured with tarragon, chervil and shallot, with its hint of acidity, is perfect for grilled fish or meats. Its well-known as a difficult sauce, but here are all the tips that you need to succeed.

348 K 4.3/5 (15 reviews)

1 hour 6 min. difficulté

Easy

£4.55

6 people

10 Ingredients

Last modified on: May 22^th 2016

For this recipe: I want to make it (441×) I made it (470×) Comment Send to a friend Ask a question Follow Printable Diaporama Vidéo User-friendly URL

For 6 people, you will need:

1 2 egg yolks
2 250 g butter
3 1 bunch Chervil
4 1 bunch tarragon
5 100 ml dry white wine
6 100 ml white (spirit) vinegar
7 1 pinch flour
8 1 shallot
9 salt
10 pepper
Total weight: 535 grams

Change to the quantities for:

2 people 3 people 6 people 12 people 18 people

Change measures:

Metric

Metric weight Metric volumes

Times for this recipe

Preparation: 40 min.

Cooking: 30 min.

All in all: 1 hour 6 min.

When should you start or finish this recipe?

If you start now, at , you will finish around : ?.Change start time

To finish around 7pm, you'll need to have started before: .Change end time

Step by step recipe

Stage 1 - 10 min.

Peel and chop finely 1 shallot.

Chop tarragon and chervil finely.

Reserve one teaspoon of chopped herbs for garnishing.

Stage 2 - 1 min.

Put shallot and herbs in a small pan, salt and pepper generously.

Stage 3 - 15 min.

Pour in 100 ml white (spirit) vinegar and 100 ml dry white wine.

Reduce over low heat until you are left with about 1/5 of the original volume.

Stage 4 - 3 min.

Pour the contents of the pan into a chinois or a strainer, and squeeze herbs to extract the juices.

Stage 5

You should get only 2 to 4 tablespoons of this tasty liquid which is the base for your sauce.

This base could be made several days beforehand, and kept in a sealed jar in the fridge.

Stage 6 - 5 min.

On the day, melt 250 g butter, remove the foam which rises to the top and discard it.

Your goal is to clarify the butter, removing as far as possbile the white impurities (whey) which will be left on the bottom.

Leave to cool.

Stage 7 - 5 min.

Prepare a bain-marie.

Put 2 egg yolks, sauce base, and 1 pinch flour in the bowl over the bain-marie.

Stage 8 - 10 min.

Put over low heat, and beat to form a sabayon.

Stage 9

Continue to beat until it thickens, and "holds" the whisk.

Stage 10

Then add the melted butter, a little at a time, while beating continously.

Stage 11 - 15 min.

Your Béarnaise will develop its texture. Continue until all the butter is added, apart from the very last bit in the container with all the impurities (discard).

Stage 12 - 2 min.

And finally add the spoonful of herbs.

Serve without too much delay. If your dish is not ready, leave the sauce to wait in the bain-marie, not too hot, with a lid.

Remarks

Some technical words: Béarnaise is a sauce of the warm emulsified kind (like hollandaise and mousseline), which means a hot base, here a well-flavoured sabayon, where butter is added to get this smooth texture.

Usually chefs make bearnaise in a different way: everything in a single pan, without a bain-marie. Faster, but more difficult.

Keeping: A few minutes, not more.

Source: Nicolas.

Nutritional information

	Proteins (gr)	Carbohydrates (gr)	Fats (gr)	Energy value (in k-calories)	Energy value (in k-joules)
Whole recipe	8 RDI=3 %	6 RDI=1 %	220 RDI=30 %	2,070 RDI=100 %	8,650 RDI: 100 %
Per 100 g	1 RDI=1 %	1 RDI=0 %	40 RDI=6 %	390 RDI=20 %	1,620 RDI: 20 %
Per person	1 RDI=1 %	1 RDI=0 %	40 RDI=6 %	340 RDI=20 %	1,440 RDI: 20 %

The % figures are calculated in relation to the Recommended Dietary Intake , or RDI of 2,000 k-calories (or 8,400 k-joules) per day for a woman Change to a man

Possible allergens in this recipe: egg, Milk, Sulfites, Gluten

How much will it cost?

For 6 people : £4.55
Per person : £0.80

Change currency:

Note: Be careful, these prices are only an estimate, you can consult the table of prices by ingredients used for this estimate.

This recipe uses (among others)

Other recipes you may also like

Cervelle de Canut

In French, this curious name means "silk-weaver's brain", but don't be alarmed, this tasty "brain" consists of cottage cheese mixed with herbs, vinegar and finely chopped shallots. The Canuts were the silk weavers in the area around Lyon, France. In the nineteenth century this was one of their...
August 1^st 202130 K 1 hour 25 min.

Crème brulée

Crème brûlée (burned cream) is quite easy to prepare: it's a simple egg-cream dessert. The only difficulty is in making the delicious crunchy caramel layer on top. The perfect crème brulée (for me) is a cold and soft cream, with on top a nice hot caramel crust. This is a completely new version...
December 31^th 20111.67 M 74.3 4 hours 40 min.

Candied grapefruit peel

Not really a dessert, more a kind of sweet. After soakiing, strips of grapefruit skin are cooked very slowly to conservethem in sugar. It's a real treat with coffee at the end of a meal.
December 20^th 2018378 K 14 1 day 1 hour 25 min.

Fresh fruit in sabayon

Fresh grapefruit and / or pears, covered with a sabayon and a pinch of citrus crunch.
February 21^th 2011290 K4.7 55 min.

Passion fruit jellies

Usually to make fruit jellies or (fruit "paste"), it's like jam but you need to cook fruit pulp and sugar much longer. Unfortunately, this long cooking is bad for both vitamins and flavour. In this recipe we use a special jam gelling agent, to reduce cooking time as much as possible .
July 4^th 2018336 K4 2 hours 30 min.

News list of cooking-ez.com

Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.