Hollandaise Sauce, Oh My What Work!

This morning I made Eggs Benedict for my mother-in-law's birthday. I thought the sauce was relatively easy to make in class so I figured, no problem. Right? WRONG!

I planned ahead and brought a strainer so I could easily remove any of those eggy pieces that might get from the sides; what else could go wrong?

I shopped for all the ingredients and brought them with me, English muffins, a pound of butter (yes, 12 of the 16 ounces are needed for four egg yolks according to the recipe), multiple eggs for the Hollandaise and for poaching, Canadian bacon and some spinach. The dish doesn't traditionally have spinach, but I thought the dish needed color and vitamins. Plus I planned to serve it to three young nieces/nephews and children always need vitamins.

(I just realized typing this that Eggs Benedict is an international dish... English Muffins, Canadian bacon, Hollandaise sauce. Ha! Ha! Some lame humor on my part.)

I wanted to engage the children in the cooking process. Thus I told them the first step is to get your aprons on; I stated this like a Nascar race, "Aprons On!"

Next we organized and got all our ingredients and equipment together, or in culinary language prepared the "mise en place" literally translated as "settings in place." I pulled out my whisk.

"What's that?"

"A whisk"

"What's a wisssk?" Adorable, aren't they? "I want a wisssk of my own."

"A whisk is used to fluff the yellow part of the egg and make the sauce. I don't have another whisk, but here, put this in your apron pocket." I handed them each a spoon. Thankfully they each seemed satisfied.

Next we proceeded to get out the eggs, muffins, and bacon. Oops. Someone ate half the muffins I brought since they were placed on the counter the previous night. No problem, there were two more packages that happened to already be in the household. I opened them and discovered that each muffin was completely covered in green mold. I guess throwing out deteriorating food goes by the wayside when you have kids because they weren't just spotted with mold, they were coated with fuzz and there wasn't just one half-eaten package of them, but two. No problem, there was some bread that wasn't fuzz colored.

On with breakfast... we needed to separate the eggs. Each child wanted to crack an egg. Easy enough, they cracked and I separated.

Snag two arrived. Uncle Joey went out to purchase hula hoops because my neice wanted to win the hula hoop contest at school the next month. Of course she'd need to practice. Conveniently, she remembered seeing hula hoops for sale at the CVS. Only the errand took nearly an hour because she remembered incorrectly and Uncle Joey had to drive the opposite direction to Walmart instead.

While holding breakfast preparations my neice and nephew proceeded to wear the bowls on their heads, toss the muffin pieces in the air to practice flipping, name and label each one of the eggs. Of those that I can remember, my neice named her eggs Delinda, Anna, Allie, Alex, and Crystal and my nephew named his Nicko, Dicko, William, and Maui. He wanted to name one Sicko, but I told him that was an ugly name. Dicko is a derivative of Richard so I felt that was an acceptable name.

Simultaneously, I started my vinegar reduction. With the flying muffins and equipment I managed to burn the reduction twice. Luckily this isn't difficult to redo.

Also to keep them engaged, I had them mix the eggs whites even though these would be tossed into the trash. This lasted quite a while; I was pleasantly surprised. But it didn't last long enough. Soon both of my apprentices were elsewhere never to return, particularly once the hula hoops arrived. My shortlived days as an influential aunt recruiting for Future Chefs of America ended.

On with breakfast, the actual cooking part... I started my first batch of Hollandaise sauce. All seemed to progress well. I thickened and whipped my yolks and incorporated my vinegar reduction. I incorporated the melted butter slowly at first and my sauce was progressing well, a little thick, but it looked good and was a nice color. In class we thinned the sauce with water, so I also did this.

BLAM! My sauce broke! No need to panic; I had eggs and butter I'd start over. This time I started with a little more vinegar reduction. My yolks whipped up better than the first time. Alright! One false start isn't bad, all in the learning experience. Plus as I told my husband, the screaming children and added stress of starting over was good stress practice for the approaching practical.

I started adding my butter, a little at a time, not too fast. Progressing well.... progressing well... more butter... incorporating well... more butter...

BLAM! My sauce broke again! Now I was getting nervous. I was running out of eggs and butter. I also had to make a new batch of vinegar reduction (this is #5 I think). I took it slowly. I told myself not to fear using lots of the reduction in the yolks as this seemed to work well last time.

My yolks were looking really good this time, nice and frothy, no egg scramble on the sides of the bowl. Hot dog! I'm cookin' now!! Finally! I managed to incorporate all the butter!

I tasted my sauce. Holy crap! It was salty!! Normally I'd use unsalted butter, but Target wanted to charge nearly twice as much for it so I purchased salted butter. I think all the salt had settled to the bottom of my melted butter dish and as a result I'd used super concentrated salted butter for my third batch of Hollandaise sauce. I didn't have the ingredients, nor time to make a fourth batch. Maybe it would be okay when eaten with unsalted eggs and spinach.

Finally I served up the Eggs Benedict! All in all, it was okay. No one could cut through the muffins because they were super toasted on the bottom awaiting my second and third batches of sauce, but at least the salty sauce wasn't as bad as it was by itself.

Something tells me I need more practice.