Béarnaise Sauce Recipe - How to Make the Best Béarnaise

Hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Bernays. That's right as promised I'm going to show you my method for making Bernays. Also known as, in my opinion at least, the world's greatest steak sauce. And while you might not have made this before, if you've ever made a hollandaise you've almost made Bernays. Since a Bernays is nothing more than a hollandaise flavored with a tarragon and shallot reduction. And it's that reduction that's going to be our first and definitely most important step. So let's go ahead and get started. And first up we're going to take about a cup of fresh tarragon leaves and give them a rough chop. And by the way I did pull these leaves off the stems, but you don't have to. Since this is all going to get strained out anyway. And as you can see I'm using my state-of-the-art trampoline style cutting board. Actually that's not a thing. The best light in my kitchen is on this rolling stainless steel cart, which unfortunately kind of bows in the middle. But anyway we're going to go ahead and roughly chop our tarragon as shown before moving on to our shallots. And for those all we need to do is peel them and then slice them thinly. And no you can't substitute onions. It won't be the same. Besides they have shallots in all the stores now. So we're going to need you to use those. And then what we'll do once our tarragon and shallots are sliced up is transfer those into a saucepan. To which we'll go ahead and add a fair amount of whole black peppercorns. And I should mention if you want you can skip this step and simply season your sauce with freshly ground black pepper. But this is the old school method I learned. So I'm going to toss in some whole black peppercorns followed by our liquids. And there's going to be three of them. Two mandatory and one optional. Okay so first up we must include some white wine vinegar. As well as some white wine. No nothing expensive but something drinkable. And then last but not least one optional splash of water. And I will explain why I like to add that in a minute. And then what we'll do once all that's together is place that on medium high heat and bring it up to a simmer. Because we are about to reduce this and reduce it severely. Which is why this is the most thrilling and dangerous part of the operation. So what we'll do is bring this up to a simmer on medium high. At which point we'll give it a stir and then back the heat down to medium low. So we can maintain a steady but sort of gentle and manageable simmer. And the reason we're being so careful here is because we're going to reduce this all the way down to about three tablespoons. And if you've done this kind of thing before you know that one of these reductions can go from three tablespoons to zero tablespoons and burning really fast. Oh and speaking of reducing really fast that's why we added the splash of water. Right since we're trying to extract flavor from the shallots and tarragon we don't want this to reduce too fast. So I do like to add a little splash of water to extend the cooking time. Which by the way altogether should take about 20 or 30 minutes. So right here I was getting very close but it needed a couple more minutes. So I didn't walk away because then it would definitely burn. And then this is what it looked like a few minutes later when I determined I had about approximately three tablespoons left. Okay I can see about two tablespoons and then I know there's going to be at least another tablespoon I can squeeze out of the vegetation. So at that point we'll go ahead and pull it off the heat and we can take a little closer look at what we have. Okay so so far so good. And then what we need to do at this point is pass that through a fine mesh strainer. And please make sure once that's transferred in that you take a spoon and squeeze that very very thoroughly. Okay as they say in the Bernays business the last drops are the best drops. So make sure you squeeze that very well to get every last bit out. Although don't do it so hard that you lose grip on the strainer and smash it into that bowl and spill everything. Which I've seen people do more than once. And while on one hand very hilarious it's also quite tragic and you'd have to start over. So please squeeze thoroughly but carefully. And if everything's gone according to plan you should have about three tablespoons of our Bernays tarragon shell reduction. Which we could use right away or if you're making this ahead just wrap it up until you need it. And then once our reduction's set we can move on to what I call the secret weapon. Most other people would call it a caper tarragon compound butter. So into our mortar we will add some drained capers followed by a handful of fresh tarragon. And one tip these work a lot better if you get the food in the mortar. And what we'll do is give this a little pounding for about a minute to get it started before we add our butter. Oh and one thing I should mention some chefs also like to add chervil to this. Which is a very nice herb and would be lovely in this but it's sometimes not that easy to find. So we're just going straight tarragon today. But anyway like I said we'll mash that for about a minute before we add our butter. Which by the way should be cold. Okay if it's too soft this step doesn't seem to work quite as well. So we will toss in some still firm butter and then we will simply work that over with our pestle for a few minutes until everything's been pulverized together and thoroughly thoroughly combined. And for me it's this compound butter we're making right now that makes our bernays superior to all other versions. Okay generally a bernays is simply a hollandaise into which that reduction we made is mixed in plus a little bit of fresh tarragon. But by introducing our fresh herb this way not only are we going to get what I think is a better flavor but also a more beautiful color. Which is your classic win-win. And then what we'll do once that's all been successfully smashed together is transfer that onto a piece of plastic. Oh and if you're noticing a little bit of liquid at the bottom of the mortar that's just a little brine from the capers that got squeezed out while we were smashing. So completely normal nothing to be alarmed about. So we will go ahead and wrap our newly made compound butter in plastic and then all we need to do is chill this. At which point it's ready to cut into a few pieces and add to our finished sauce. And you're going to see that step very shortly because we're ready to move into final production. Which means we have to make a hollandaise. Using of course our foolproof proprietary method. So into a stainless steel bowl we will add two large egg yolks plus our approximately three tablespoons worth of reduction. And we will take a whisk and give that a mix. And then once that's been combined we can go ahead and add all our cold butter which has been cubed up. Well actually not all our cold butter since we used a little bit to mix with our tarragon and capers. But besides our compound butter we will add everything at this point. At which point we will head to the stove where we will whisk this mixture fairly constantly over between low and medium heat until it thickens up into a perfect hollandaise. So we will use a towel in one hand to hold the bowl and a whisk in the other. And other than not letting the towel catch on fire there's really not a lot to do here besides stir. And if you've never made hollandaise using our method you might be kind of confused right now. And thinking what the heck is this guy doing? There's no way this is going to work. Well not only is it going to work it's going to work perfectly every time. All right just keep whisking and eventually the butter will melt. And then slowly but surely as that comes up to temperature it's going to start to thicken up and that color is going to turn a lot paler. And eventually if you whisk and cook long enough it will thicken up into a gorgeous hollandaise. Oh and regarding the vague temperature setting given the reason I said over low to medium heat is because while low heat is safer this will also work over medium heat which is significantly faster. All right in our actual hollandaise video I said to use low but that's because I didn't want people to scramble their egg yolks and blame me. But truth be told medium really does work and that's why I used here. But regardless of which heat setting you use like I said we're going to whisk that until it thickens up. So that's looking pretty good right there. And when it does thicken up what we'll do is turn our heat to low and stir in our compound butter which we can break or cut into three or four pieces. So we'll go ahead and add that and whisk it in. And as I mentioned earlier not only is this butter adding the flavor we need it's also going to add a much more beautiful color. And then what we'll do once that's stirred in and our heat is off is taste it for final seasoning. And I decided to add a little more salt along with the obligatory shake of cayenne. And if you want a lot of chefs also will add some freshly ground black pepper here which I will not add because I use the peppercorns. But anyway that's up to you. You are the noz of your bernays. And right here you can get a great look at what I think is the perfect thickness. All right we don't want it too thick or too thin so try to get it perfect. And then once we've determined our sauce is finally finished we can go ahead and transfer that into some kind of gorgeous sauce boat. Or if you can't find one of those you could transfer into something like this. At which point this is ready to enjoy. Although not necessarily on a spoon since you really can appreciate its brilliance. So I recommend tasting on a small piece of medium rare beef. And if that goes well we can go ahead and enjoy that with some bigger pieces of beef. And I'm not sure I'm going to be able to explain why this works so amazingly well with steaks and roast beef. Maybe all the butter has something to do with it. But there's just something about that combination of that sweet herbaceous tarragon as well as our shallots and black pepper in that reduction that pair just so incredibly well with these meaty flavors. Of course having said that this is also amazing on so many other things like roasted potatoes or vegetables or pretty much any seafood. Or if you're a fan of the eggs benedict you could do a version using steak instead of Canadian bacon and instead of hollandaise use this bernays. That my friends is how you become a brunch legend. But anyway that's it how to make bernays or at least how I make bernays. So whether you use this to make the world's best benedict or you just want to learn one of the world's most famous and delicious sauces I really do hope you give this a try soon. So head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual. And as always enjoy!