Recipe of the Month: Sous Vide Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise Sauce

Whether you’re already an experienced sous vide chef or you’re ready to try out your brand new sous vide superpowers for the first time, here’s a fantastic recipe for you to try: Sous Vide Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise Sauce.

On one level, eggs Benedict is a super easy dish. Put Canadian bacon on a toasted English muffin, top it with a poached egg, drizzle it with Hollandaise sauce, and you’re golden! But every chef knows that it’s not that easy. With traditional poaching methods, it’s tricky to get eggs with the right combination of smooth, firm whites and creamy yolks. Hollandaise is even trickier; if you use too little heat, the sauce won’t thicken, but if you use too much, it will “break” and leave you with a goopy mess. Making eggs Benedict may be simple, but making it right has always been notoriously difficult.

Until now.

With a sous vide immersion circulator, you’re guaranteed perfect eggs and fantastic Hollandaise sauce every time!

Ingredients for Hollandaise Sauce (makes four generous servings)

• 85 grams egg yolk (approximately 5 large egg yolks)
• 40 grams champagne vinegar
• 25 grams shallots, minced
• 60 grams water
• 20 grams lemon juice
• 3 grams salt
• 150 grams butter

Instructions for Hollandaise Sauce

1. Fill a pot or other heat-resistant container with at least four inches of water. Attach your immersion blender and set it to preheat your water bath to 167°F.
2. Heat vinegar and shallots in a small saucepan until you’ve reduced liquid by half.
3. Strain to remove shallots. Save the remaining liquid reduction.
4. Brown the butter.

   Pro Tip: “Brown butter” is butter that has been heated just enough that its milk solids have turned brown. For a demonstration of how to brown butter, see here. With its nutty flavor and fantastic smell, brown butter is a chef’s favorite little secret. You can make countless good recipes even better just be substituting it for regular butter! Try it over pancakes, in chocolate chip cookies, or in just about any recipe that calls for a butter-based sauce.

5. Pour the brown butter, yolk, water, lemon juice, vinegar reduction, and salt into a ziplock bag. (No need to vacuum seal this bad boy!)
6. When water bath has reached 167°, lower the bag into the water until the ingredients are submerged but the top of the bag is above water. Attach the top of the bag to the side of the container with a binder clip to hold it in place. Don’t let any water get into the bag. Leave the bag in the sous vide water for 30 minutes.
7. Pour the contents of the bag into a blender and blend until smooth. This step ensures that the sauce will be silky smooth.

Ingredients for Eggs Benedict (makes four servings)

• 2 English muffins, halved
• 4 slices Canadian bacon (you can substitute thick-cut ham, steak, prosciutto, crab, or a protein of your choice)
• 4 large eggs
• 2 T chopped chives or parsley
• Hollandaise sauce (from recipe above)

Instructions for Eggs Benedict

1. Pour at least four inches of water into a pot or heat-resistant container. Attach your sous vide immersion circulator to the container and set its temperature to 167°F. (Since the eggs and Hollandaise sauce cook at the same temperature, you can prepare them simultaneously in the same water bath.)
2. When the water bath is at 167°, carefully place four large eggs into the bath. Leave them for 12 minutes, then remove them carefully with a slotted spoon and place them in a dish of ice water.

   Pro Tip: The best method we’ve found for “poaching” eggs is the sous vide method used by America’s Test Kitchen: you can find step-by-step instructions here. It’s not really poaching, of course, because the eggs are cooked inside the shell, but it’s simple, foolproof, and guaranteed to give eggs exactly the texture we want.

   This approach cooks the eggs at 167° for 12 minutes, which is much hotter than most eggs Benedict recipes recommend. Trust us, by cooking at a higher temp for a shorter time you’ll give the whites the perfect firmness without overcooking the yolks. Usually when you cook sous vide you set the temperature to exactly what you want and leave it—it’s practically impossible to overcook. But setting your temp to 167° means that you’ll need to pay attention and take the eggs out at 12 minutes or else they will overcook.

3. Fry your bacon in a pan over medium low heat. Carefully remove the bacon and set it on a paper towel to absorb excess grease. Scrape the pan clean, but leave a little bacon grease in the pan.
4. Toast the muffins in the pan, allowing them to soak up some of that blessed bacon goodness!
5. Assemble by placing your bacon on the muffins, carefully cracking your eggs and placing them on the bacon, and topping the whole glorious thing with your Hollandaise sauce and a sprinkle of chives or parsley.
6. Serve up your sous vide eggs Benedict and amaze your family and friends with your sous vide ninja skills!

Enjoy, and eat well.

The post Recipe of the Month: Sous Vide Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise Sauce appeared first on Culinary Crafts.