Food escapades in modernist cuisine

Bearnaise Sauce with the Vitamix

My wife and I recently went to France for two weeks on our honeymoon and while we were there, we visited a small neighborhood bistro in Paris named Café des Musees in the 3rd arrondisement where we enjoyed a classic steak frites served with béarnaise sauce.

We loved that sauce and vowed to re-create it when we returned home. To accompany our 24 hour chuck roast that we recently made, I decided to make a béarnaise sauce and hopefully transport us back to France for the night.

Most recipes for béarnaise typically calls for manually whisking in pieces of butter into a combination of egg yolks and a vinegar / wine reduction to create an emulsion. Making a béarnaise like this requires a lot of effort and time so to avoid this, I used my Vitamix blender instead. Here's what I did.

Directions

For the béarnaise, you'll need shallot or onion, dry white wine, tarragon, white wine vinegar, butter, egg yolks, salt, and pepper.


I made the bearnaise reduction first. In a small saucepan, I combined the tarragon, shallots, white wine vinegar and dry white wine over medium-high heat. This was brought to a simmer and cooked down until reduced by half. Meanwhile, I also melted down two sticks of butter in a separate pan.



I then separated 3 eggs and placed the egg yolks into my Vitamix. To this I added the bearnaise reduction and blended on variable setting 2 until the egg yolks were aerated.



With the blender running, I slowly added a third of the butter in a slow steady stream. Once it emulsified, I turned the blender speed up to high and added the remaining butter.


And here's the final result - a completely emulsified, flavorful bernaise suace.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've made your recipe a couple times. Worked perfect each time. Searched Vitamix website for a Bearnaise recipe and ......nothing. Thanks for taking the time to share.

Thought For Food said...

That's great to hear. I'm glad you found it useful. Happy cooking!

Anonymous said...

Hi from the UK. When you say a stock of butter, what weight is that? A stick of butter isn't a recognised term in the UK.

Doreen said...

A stick of butter is 1/2 a cup!

Anonymous said...

Hi, what are the amounts of the ingredients?

Tom said...

I just made this last night for Christmas dinner with some lobster stuffed beef tenderloin. It was great! A lot easier than using the double boiler. Thank you!

Unknown said...

Yes as above, do you have records on the reduction amount, eg 300 ml and also what temp was the reduction when you added it to the eggs. THanks

Unknown said...

Super easy in the vitamix. I've made this recipe several times and have settle on this: 1 cup (80% white wine, 20% white wine vinegar), 1 large shallot (rough chop, it's going into the vitamix afterall), 2 tbls. fresh taragon, then (obviously) 2 sticks butter.

Robin said...

Thank you for the specific directions! I really wanted to make this but the ingredients were vauge.

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