HI I'm Gee Charman and welcome to my back to basics series.
In this episode, I am going to show you how to cook the perfect eggs benedict.
[music] So for the perfect eggs benedict, I guess
the most difficult part, well there's two really, making hollandaise sauce and poaching
an egg.
Now I'm going to show you a sort of cheats way of poaching eggs, just to make it really
simple.
So in a deep sauté pan or frying pan, I got about 3 inches of water and to that I'm just
going to add a splash of white wine vinegar and a little bit of salt.
Now with the vinegar you are not going to get any taste in the eggs, its just helps
hold the whites together.
Now there is only one problem with poaching eggs, you need really fresh eggs.
It doesn't matter if you are the best chef if the world if you got unfresh eggs, the
white is all loose and you will not be able to poach it properly, but these should be
nice and fresh eggs.
So what I'm going to is I'm actually going to roll them in the water as it's just coming
up to a simmer in the shells.
And I'm going to roll them back and forth in the water for about 15 seconds.
Now the idea of doing this is it sets the secondary white of the egg.
So when you crack an egg you have the yolk, and then you have the really thick white,
and then you have that watery white.
Now what this is doing is setting that watery white, and that means is when you crack it
into the pan later, it's already half held together for you so it does half the work.
So my water is just starting to simmer, there rolled in the hot water, and I'm going to
crack them gently and carefully into the pan.
Now what you don't want are big bubbles cause as the bubbles come up, they're going to start
breaking the whites up.
You want a really gentle, gentle heat.
Now that they're in, I'm going to turn the heat right down.
We can't even turn it down and leave it with a lid.
Now I'm just going to splash a little bit of water up over the whites, very gently just
so they are a nice shape.
Now that secondry white, when they come out, might spread down just a little bit, and you
can trim them down just to make them look beautiful.
But as you can see, they're pretty much holding together.
Just going to leave those to sit, just as simple as that.
So I'm just going to make my hollandaise.
I'm just going to swap these pans over, doing it very gently.
Cut this one on, very low.
And in a sauce pan I'm going to melt 175 grams of butter.
So I'm just going to melt make it nice and hot.
So in a small blender I've got three egg yolks that I'm just going to pop in.
And then there is an argument for white pepper.
Its a white sauce, mashed potatoes, white pepper.
I'm a black pepper fan.
I just love it so I don't mind the flakes in it.
I think it looks quite nice.
But the classic French chefs would be screaming at me now.
But I don't care.
So a little bit of black pepper in there.
I'm not going to season it just yet because I'm using a salted butter, not many recipes
say unsalted butter.
I like salted butter, I prefer the flavor.
So I'm going to use that and I can season with salt later.
I'm just going to pop the lid onto my blender.
Now if you don't have one of these blenders, you can do it in a jug with a stick blender,
which ever you have really.
And then blend these up very quickly.
Now because there isn't that much egg in there, you might have to tilt your blender.
And the key is my butter is now nice and hot and bubbling.
You want to run the blender as you pour it in slowly.
Theres a few sploshes and sploshes but you know, its well worth it.
So you want to add it really slowly.
So
I think that's just about it.
Perfect, now I'm just going to add a little bit of salt.
And just to just cut through the fat, you can add a little squeeze of lemon juice.
And thats how the hollandaise sauce is done.
Now I"m just going to get my eggs back.
And the way to see if they are cooked is just to lift them out of the water carefully.
And what I tend to do, just drain a little bit of excess water and just feel the middle.
If it's still nice and soft, then you know its soft in the middle and you have this nice
runny yolk and if its nice and firm around the white, you know its ready.
Like this one.
I can put that one away.
So now those are draining.
I've got two English muffins which are traditional.
Here's some beautiful thick cut ham.
If you want, you can use crispy bacon.
Put one egg on one.
One on the other and then, some of this delicious hollandaise on top.
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button.
And the final bit of black pepper because I love my black pepper.
And thats it.
Really simple, really quick eggs bendict with hollandaise sauce.
[music]