Cooking Tips

For Hollandaise Sauce Minus the Hassle, Use Your Blender

Less work, less time, just as good.

By Danielle Lapierre

Published Mar. 5, 2021.

Eggs benedict is one of my favorite breakfast dishes. But my favorite component of it is the hollandaise sauce. It’s rich, lemony, and decadent—how many breakfast-appropriate cream sauces are there?

But it’s not just for breakfast. I’m a believer that you could put it on anything: asparagus, salmon, chicken, and more.

But if I love it so much, why don’t I make it more often?

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Hollandaise sauce is notoriously finicky to make, due to the necessary emulsion of the butter and egg yolks. Usually it requires a double boiler with constant whisking and monitoring. Half of the time I succeed using this method, and the other half, all I’m left with is a broken sauce and a sore wrist.

But then I discovered that our test cooks had developed a foolproof method to make hollandaise in the blender.

I was intrigued. So I toasted up an English muffin, made some Perfect Poached Eggs, and gave it a try. I was amazed at how well it worked. Adding the melted butter slowly as the blender was running helped create the creamy emulsion. I had the perfect hollandaise sauce in less time, with less work. In fact, it’s so convenient that maybe I really will start putting it on everything.

Blender Hollandaise Sauce

Makes about 1¼ cups

3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon table salt
Pinch cayenne pepper, plus extra for seasoning
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and hot (180 degrees)

1. Melt butter and keep hot (about 180 degrees).

2. Process egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne in blender until frothy, about 10 seconds, scraping down bottom and sides of blender jar as needed.

3. With blender running, slowly add hot butter and process until hollandaise is emulsified, about 2 minutes.

4. Adjust consistency with hot water as needed until sauce drips slowly from spoon. Season with salt and extra cayenne to taste. Serve immediately.

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_{Photo: Luka Storm / Getty Images}