What is a béarnaise sauce?

French cuisine is famous for its variety of flavors and a lot of sauces, which can both add spice to the dish and hide some minor mistakes of the cook.

Classical

Classic béarnaise sauce, the recipe of which is offered below, is one of the five most important and common gravies of the cuisine of this country. At the same time, French chefs divide their sauces into two categories: universal, as well as those that are served specifically for a particular dish.

Bearn refers to the first group, it is perfectly combined with both meat and poultry. You can serve it hot and cold. Before proceeding with the description of the recipe, let us outline two features of the preparation of sauce:

• To achieve his true taste, it is worth giving preference to fresh seasonings;
• It is necessary to acquire a thermometer in order to regulate the temperature of the oil. Since, overheating it, you can quickly spoil the sauce.

Sauce

So, for cooking you will need:

• 2 tbsp. Spoons of fresh tarragon (if it is dried, then add only 1 tablespoon);
• 1 branch of chervil (we need only the petals);
• Half a bunch of parsley;
• 1 shallots (can be replaced with onions, but then cut it and add only 1. item spoon);
• 3 champignons (large);
• Half a bunch of chives;
• A pinch of pepper, salt and 10 grains of black pepper ;
• 5 eggs;
• 200 ml of white wine;
• 250 g of butter;
• ½ st. Spoons of lemon juice (best freshly squeezed).

It is believed that the Béarnaise sauce is prepared primarily from eggs and butter, but when you try it, you will surely understand that each component is equally important, and the absence of any one is very important for the taste. The herbs that are included in the composition are spicy, which is why the taste of gravy has a very specific, but at the same time remarkable.

Classic way of cooking

Starting to make the sauce, remember that in the finished form it should be thick and homogeneous, like mayonnaise.

1. French chefs begin with the preparation of herbs, sorting through them and cutting off the necessary petals.
2. Then they are finely chopped and placed in different containers.
3. Pepper grains are crushed by the back side of the knife or spoon.
4. Shallots are cut into thin half rings.
5. All this is added to the white wine and brought to a boil. Cook on low heat until the volume is less than half. Now, while all this cools, you need to separate the proteins from the yolks.
6. Through a fine sieve pour our cooled spicy wine into a container of yolks. Then take a large enough pot (one that is suitable for a water bath), pour water and let it boil. Mass with yolks and wine (directly on a water bath) carefully mix, so that the resulting consistency was similar to a cream for a cake. As a result, the volume should double.
7. Constantly stirring, in a mass with yolks, a thin stream of pre-melted butter. It is very important not to stop interfering throughout this process. After 5-6 minutes you can add the remaining finely chopped herbs and salt to taste.

Alternative way of cooking

Beer sauce can also be prepared in a slightly different way, but using all the same ingredients.

1. At first, very finely chopped onions stew on low heat in white wine vinegar or in wine. At the same stage, add black pepper. We wait until the liquid in the frying pan is reduced by about 80%. It is worth noting once again that you need to stir all the time and very carefully!
2. Having set aside the frying pan, we proceed to the next stage: mix yolks with butter. In the same mass through the sieve pour the remaining wine vinegar, which was prepared onion. All mix.
3. Beer sauce is easily folded, so a steam bath is just necessary.
4. A pan of water is brought to a boil, and then immediately turn off the fire. In boiling water, slowly lower the container with the future sauce and very intensely interfere.
5. Once it starts to thicken, you need to add butter, which you pre-cut into small pieces.
6. Immediately, as the oil dissolves, you can add chopped chervil and tarragon.

Bearnaise sauce. With what to eat and how to serve

As mentioned above, this sauce is very versatile and suitable for many dishes. It is usually served with asparagus or cauliflower. In France, it is very often the steak on the bone is presented with the Béarn sauce. This is because the gentle consistency makes the meat a little softer, and the spices fill it.

The delicacy of this simple gravy will never drown the taste of the fish dish, since the herbs in it perfectly complement both the hard varieties of seafood and soft ones. Beer sauce fits perfectly to the eggs "Benedict" instead of the usual Dutch. It can even be offered for breakfast, for example, to hot sandwiches.

Advice

• If in the process you noticed that your Béarné sauce is slightly stratified, then add 3-4 ice cubes to the sauce and beat it.
• The cooking temperature must not exceed 60 °. Otherwise you will get a simple omelet. On the other hand, if the temperature is lower, the sauce will not thicken and will get a very unpleasant smell.
• In a heterogeneous or too liquid gravy, you can pour in the whipped yolk, and then you need to wipe the mass again through a sieve.
• Stored sauce for no more than three days in the refrigerator, at room temperature it is better to keep it about 6-7 hours.
• You only need to warm up in a water bath.

Conclusion

Now you know how to properly prepare the sauce of Béarnard, which herbs to use, and how to combine it. We hope that thanks to our advice, you can prepare it yourself.