How to Make Eggs Benedict the Classic Way; Kenji's Cooking Show

every good morning this is Kenji I'm at home and I'm about to make some eggs benedict which I've been promised my wife I'd make for a while first I'm gonna do actually so last night in a fit of have an urge to go baking I made this you know need English muffin dough it's made from Stella Parks's recipe from serious eats but I am completely ignored the instructions because I wanted to make them in the morning and hopefully they'll come out and if they don't I got back up English muffins from the store in the fridge so to make Eggs Benedict much easier than people think it is we're gonna start by making our hollandaise which is an egg and butter emulsion so you want to use really fresh eggs for this because they poach better they hold their shape better um so what you want to do is inspiration date here's April 29th look at this instead for this number the three-digit number this is zero nine zero and this one here says zero nine five that number is the date that the Julian calendar date that the egg was packed on so these were packed five days later than the others which means that they're probably late about five days later than the others so that makes them fresher mmm one broken one I never worry about the broken eggs so I'm gonna we're gonna use one whole egg here for the hollandaise plus one egg yolk and I'm gonna save that I see the white here you can go all yolks if you want there's not not really any reason to use egg white other than a well it makes the sauce a little bit lighter which it's already a pretty rich sauce to begin with and it saves you having to find another use for that egg white later I'm gonna beat him up real well season with salt that'll help the egg proteins kind of break down a little bit so they beat more easily and meanwhile I'm gonna take some butter and I'm gonna melt it I have any welted in here so for 2 egg yolks like this I would use about about 1/2 stick of butter maybe slightly more we'll see what will go until it until it feels right I'm gonna microwave this if you want to melt it a lot of hollandaise recipes call for clarified butter butter I never bother clarifying my butter people say that it makes the sauce thinner but I've never found that to be the case and I actually kind of enjoy the flavor that the that the extra milk solids the sort of a fresh milkiness that comes from using whole milk whole butter is supposed to clarified butter I'll show you how you can clarify it if you wanted oh this is gonna be my tea i boiled some extra water for my tea so I'm gonna make this hollandaise the old-fashioned way it's kind of one of the very first things I learned how to make at a fancy restaurant I used to have to worked at a restaurant called number and I'm Park which is some up near the Statehouse and Boston up on and near the park OOP here's the buddy I'll clean that later um so now if I wanted to clear this but clarify this letter what I would do is I would scoop off the foamy stuff at the top and then as I poured it I would be careful not to get the layer of milk solids at the bottom and the stuff in the middle is the clarified butter that's the part you want to keep but I just use the whole thing and I will clean out that microwave after I promise I don't leave message for other people so I used to work at this restaurant called number nine Park and as the new guy my job was to you know sometimes they we weren't open for breakfast but sometimes like the Senators and the politicians would have special breakfast meetings at the restaurant and so I was the guy who had to get there early to make breakfast oh and so I made a ton a hollandaise early on and I learned how to make it the very first time I learned how to make all I tried to make hollandaise I did it from a book where I didn't have any visual idea I don't think I've ever had real holidays in my life I'd only ever had that stuff from diners that was made with a powder so not real hollandaise and I never didn't really understand the concept or what it was supposed to look like or even what it was it tastes like at the end I'm gonna had a little bit sorry so I got the water here steamed underneath the underneath the pot if you're really good at this and you and you're paying real good attention you can you can do it directly over an open flame by going on and off the heat with the bowl and I don't really think it's necessary to do that almost you want to show off this is an immature Meyer lemon you can use a regular lemon but this is just what I had so the very first time I made holidays was from a book and I didn't know what's supposed to look like so I put eggs in a nonstick skillet I hadn't kind of over low heat and I was whisking them until they turned kind of into scrambled eggs and then I tried whisking in butter and I ended up with a sort of greasy lumpy scrambled egg thing really what you want to do is you want to whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk and you're gonna see the eggs are gonna start to thicken as the heat once they get to I think it's around like a hundred sixty-five degrees but you I never use a thermometer for this once they get to around there you're sort of out there maximum thickness and it seems like they're going to start to scramble that's when you start to start adding your butter I want to take it off the heat so I can flip these I've no idea these English jump in there girl work they're looking pretty good they're puffing nicely if you want a better experience follow Stella's actual recipe which calls for a mixture of whole wheat and regular flour and honey instead of agave nectar which is what I used as well as a full 12 hours for the second rise so the difference in texture between a hand whisked hollandaise and one that's made with an immersion blender it's not really that significant but a hand with hollandaise will have sort of a slight we'll have slightly more air incorporated into it so we'll have a slightly lighter texture you can see how nice and foamy this is starting to get and it's starting to thicken up a little bit higher on the heat here and now actually what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start my egg poaching so I think I don't know where my strainer went I know I think my daughter was playing that outside I mentioned the other day here I'm gonna use this bowl so you don't have to strain your eggs but I find that straining your eggs really helps give them a nicer shape so eggs have hey let me break one out into a bowl and show you so eggs have a sort of thicker part of the white and the looser part of the white and by draining them like this you see how that that extra loose weight is coming out that makes it so that you can subsequently get a much cleaner shape when you poach them that's through my real secret to perfect poached eggs I really really dislike that method where you put a piece of plastic wrap in a bowl and put the egg in it and then kind of put the egg on poach the egg in the plastic wrap because it ends up first of all it's nothing like poached eggs because the water doesn't actually come in touch with the eggs and then more importantly your egg looks like it's been wrapped in plastic because it has so I really just like that method you don't have to do this step either and also you know even if your egg is a little bit older so this like looks a little bit older a little more watery right white not quite holding a shape as well it'll still taste fine and it'll probably still poach just fine too so alright so I got a couple eggs there get a Canadian bacon off to the side Canadian bacon it's not really Canadian right everyone knows that but it is based on something called peameal bacon which is that which is a Canadian thing and it's made with pork loin that's been cured and coated in cornmeal just like these English muffins have in fact so that Canadian bacon is actually what is actually cornmeal free what they call peameal bacon salt the water you don't need to add vinegar anything to it the vinegar kind of helps it coagulate faster if you have a lot of that loose white but you don't need it if you do this sort of draining this draining trick here so little swirl just so the X stays separated and then in they go and you might get worried that they're going to stick together but you don't really have to worry about that too much and so you see oh now even though there's some loose white on that kind of older looking egg this swirl helps contain it so we're going to let those sit for a second before we try moving them meanwhile I'm going to continue whisking my yolk mixture I really opened up whisk averse here there's a pretty high risk environment I wish every word so there's eggs here you see don't stick together eggs are eggs are kind I like to say they don't stick together in the same way that like if you put a bucket full of water balloons together they don't stick to each other when eggs have like a membrane around them so those loose whites might stick with the actual sack even there's an invisible sack it will it will not stick to itself to each other all right whisking whisking whisking skinning and you see how this is starting to get a little bit thick you can feel it the back of your finger it's warming up not quite hot yet but warming up so you'll notice that the texture starts changing years ago and I got it you got to be the change you wish to see all right so once it starts leaving these sort of big empty streaks at the bottom of the bowl and only slowly filling that's when you know you're starting to get ready to be able to add your butter so I got my butter here I'm just gonna slowly drizzle idiot it's all in the whisk this plain of course you can feel free to play with the ratio of butter two eggs if you like I had a chef I used to use six eggs per 1/2 pound of butter which is a lot but you know he's sort of considered hollandaise to be an egg sauce I consider it more to be you know egg sauce that's enriched with butter whereas I c'n is considered to be a butter sauce that's bound with eggs thickened with eggs you can also think of it kind of as a warm mayonnaise because that's essentially what it is it's the same emulsion egg with fat all right so you see our nice and fluffy and smooth it is now we're getting down to the part you see how here if you watch inside as it drips now you can see that layer of liquid water with milk solids at the bottom a lot of people stopped drizzling right here I just go right ahead and pour it all and doesn't hurt the sauce I never actually counted the number of with the fix to make hollandaise but that would be a calculated risk there we go we're gonna hold off the side and I think our eggs should be done went out and check yeah perfect the last thing we're gonna do is toaster there's the inside of one of those English muffins so just a couple minutes on those eggs completely loose yolk and gently set white there you go perfect poached eggs hollandaise does not reheat well it's difficult to reheat it it's difficult to store it so you kind of want to use it when you make it but if you do want to reheat it you can sort of leave it out at room temperature and then when it comes time to reheat it very gently reheat it while whisking over the double boiler again you might have to thin it out with a little bit of water and which one of these in those muffins are we gonna use let's try this guy let's see if these no completely misdirected and these muffins are gonna work does it look like English muffins a little floppy err sure I'll go with that I'll take that how you taste our hollandaise mmm super light nice amount of acid so you see that texture there how it's like it's almost like in fact it could be a little bit thicker but it's almost kind of frothy this stuff is excellent over asparagus it's excellent for dipping artichokes into if you make it instead of with lemon juice if you make a reduction out of white wine and white wine vinegar with a some tarragon stems and shallot in it you reduce it down to kind of a syrup and then you use that in place of lemon juice then you had chopped tarragon at the end that's what sauce bearnaise is which is great on steak you can also sort of add add other things to this you're gonna get rid with red wine for a red wine red wine so I own or a red wine bearnaise you can add herbs fie nerves are great in here I got some chives over there from the garden all right there we go beautiful so the only real secrets with hollandaise are you don't want to let it get too hot although if you're constantly whisking it it's really not going to break or curdle too much there's not very little risk of that so once it gets to the thickness that you want it you're gonna stop don't let it get too hot and you want to make sure that the eggs are thick enough before you start adding the butter those are the really only major pitfalls with hollandaise is also making it too far in advance so that it's difficult to hold but like I said you can always reheat it over a double boiler whisking very carefully add a little bit of liquid if you go ahead if it starts to thicken up too much so you see how it now it's like just about the right texture it you can get it around the bowl like this and it kind of very gently flows and ribbons that's the texture one you want a texture that's gonna sort of coat that egg get our Canadian baked in I'm taking a little cornmeal on these eggs alright um poached eggs by the way you can poach them like a day in advance or you know a few days in advance and what you do is eat them put them in cold water and store them in cold water in the fridge and then when you want to serve them you simply mm put them into warm water and reheat them then do a very rough chop on these chairs then I'm gonna save this holidays later for later for him I'm gonna save it for these artichokes here yeah match me to heaven okay so you see how light and airy this is and as it flows over the egg it coats it it doesn't run off in a watery mess it coats the eggs which is exactly what you're looking for by the way I'm not always into bad puns but I figure this is a waste gun willing to take all right I'm gonna steal a bite before my wife gets hers here we go let's see how we did on those yolks mmm light but rich I mean yeah handmade hollandaise is a really sort of unique thing you go chef sit good girl Oh a little bit of hollandaise here good girl Audrey breakfast tasty all right see you later

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 972,093

Rating: 4.9227109 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: pkzRzrxYtMo

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/eljedo]

ok the whisk jokes were freaking hilarious!!! no whisk, no reward. really the ultimate dad joke.

I'm loving your POV vids and I made half scrambled eggs a few times, and got them perfect this morning. takes a bit of practice to get the heat right and mix them before it's too late. really nice dichotomy of textures when it's done right.

[u/XP_Studios]

why do the eggpackers use a calendar that's not been in use for 500 years?

[u/sanmateomary]

Great video -- watching the hollandaise really cling to the eggs instead of dripping down -- definitely not like any hollandaise you'll find in a diner or supermarket.

Let me know if you need any Meyer lemons.

[u/lumberjackhammerhead]

That hollandaise looked phenomenal! Thanks for all the vids.

I no joke made some super soft scrambled eggs to have on toast the day before you posted your video on them (first time I've made scrambled eggs in forever, so the timing was unreal!), but I was cooking mine until it could easily sit on toast instead of the sauce-like consistency you had.

I needed more bread so I used your roasted garlic focaccia recipe (without the garlic, ran out), which was amazing. Then I tried the scrambled eggs and stopped at the consistency from your video and finished with sour cream. I just need to say WOW!! It was incredible. And seriously, thank you so much for posting all this amazing content. My fiancee and I have been loving it!

[u/badassite]

Hey, just started on your book, I love it so far! After the distancing Is over want to catch s coffee say in mv?

[u/josalingoboom]

Perfect timing! Making this tomorrow morning