Foolproof Béarnaise Sauce

For my money, the very best classic steak sauce you can make at home, a sauce that will wow your guests with its flavor and elegance, and—most important—a sauce that can be made start to finish in under half an hour, is béarnaise.

Classic French steak sauces like espagnole or its derivatives, bordelaise or Robert, for instance, require intensely rich, gelatin-packed demi-glace. Those sauces are multi-day affairs that nobody but the most ambitious home cooks will even attempt. Compound butters flavored with herbs and aromatics are a great option for a home-cooked steak, as is a simple pan sauce, but they're lacking in class and panache. That's where béarnaise comes in. It's as classy as sauces come, it requires nothing that you can't find at your average supermarket, and it's quick to make.

What Is Béarnaise?

Béarnaise is a fat-in-water emulsion—in this case, butter emulsified into a reduction of white wine and vinegar flavored with shallots, tarragon, and chervil, all bound and thickened with egg yolks. It's technically a derivative of hollandaise sauce, one of the five French mother sauces. And just like with hollandaise, the ways to mess it up are plentiful. Traditionally, you'd make béarnaise over a double boiler, slowly drizzling in clarified butter while whisking egg yolks until a thick emulsion is formed. Add the fat too fast and you break your emulsion. Heat it up too much and it turns into scrambled eggs. Don't heat it enough and you'll have a thin, wet sauce instead of a rich, meat-coating sauce. 

The Key to Making a Foolproof Béarnaise

Fortunately, we can use the exact same technique we use to make foolproof hollandaise and mayonnaise to make a foolproof béarnaise. The key is to completely forgo the double boiler, instead heating up the butter and using its residual heat to cook the egg yolks. By placing the yolks and the wine reduction in the bottom of a tall container that just barely fits the head of a hand blender, we can create a strong vortex that then pulls hot butter down towards the blades of the hand blender, creating a strong, stable emulsion. Check out our foolproof hollandaise video to learn more about the science behind this technique.

Stir in some chopped tarragon and chervil (I sometimes also add a few tablespoons of minced chives), and you're ready to serve. Steak never had it so good.