Cómo recuperar una salsa a base de huevo que se ha cortado
Una salsa de huevo cortada puede salvarse si se bate una nueva yema con vinagre o limón y se le incorpora poco a poco la salsa separada.
If you make sauces at home, you already have experience. You might be familiar with the five mother sauces of French cuisine: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato sauce. Of these, hollandaise is an egg-based sauce, made with butter, lemon juice, and raw egg yolks.
Its creamy texture relies on the emulsification of eggs, but the sauce tends to curdle or separate, just like water and oil. In a béchamel sauce, everything blends easily with heat; in an egg sauce, however, the eggs must act as a bridge to achieve a stable and uniform sauce.
If the sauce resembles scrambled eggs, there's no solution, because the eggs are overcooked. But if it has separated into oil and water, and has a watery, lumpy appearance, it can still be salvaged. Start with a fresh batch of emulsifier, for example, egg yolk beaten with vinegar or lemon juice, and gradually incorporate the separated sauce, whisking constantly. It's a good idea to have extra eggs on hand and thin the sauce with a little water.
Before remaking it, find out why it curdled to improve your technique: whether it got too hot or was overmixed. Food critic Nigel Slater recommends in an article for The Guardian avoiding excessive heat and whisking the ingredients in a heatproof glass bowl over simmering water.
Another common tip for making mayonnaise is to add the oil to the egg yolks drop by drop at first, because if you rush it, the mayonnaise will curdle. Once the mixture thickens, you can speed up the process.
With these techniques you can enjoy eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce at home.
