Béarnaise Sauce (With A Side of Steak)

*Post by Angela.

As much as I pay lip service to expanding my culinary experiences, there tend to be very serious holes in my self-taught home kitchen education. One of the bigger holes is French cuisine - we don't go to that many French restaurants, and it shows up in our kitchen...well, almost never. Yesterday, I decided to start remedying that by making Tyler Florence's ultimate Béarnaise sauce. Béarnaise is a classic French sauce made with butter, egg yolks, and tarragon. People are constantly raving about it, but while I might have tasted it before, I don't think I've ever actually ordered it (when it comes to steak, I tend to be more of a purist), and definitely had never made it myself. But I'm glad I chose to try it out - I really loved how the vinegary tang of the creamy sauce complemented the steak. I may even have to make this again for Mark tonight. 

List of ingredients:

• 1/4 cup tarragon leaves
• 2 shallots
• 1/4 cup champagne vinegar
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 stick butter, melted + 1 tbsp
• Salt and pepper
• 1 boneless ribeye, about 2" thick
• 1 tbsp canola oil

First, I minced up the shallots and chopped up the tarragon. Such gorgeous flavors - I could already tell this was going to be good. I don't often use tarragon in dishes, because it has a pretty powerful (anise-like) flavor, but given the richness of the rest of the ingredients, I figured it would balance out nicely (spoiler - it totally did).

I put the shallots and tarragon into a small pan with the vinegar and the white wine, brought it to a simmer and let reduce by half. I removed the pan from the heat and let the reduction cool.

In the meantime, I took the steak out of the fridge, seasoned liberally with coarse sea salt and pepper, and let to come to room temperature, covered. I've talked about my steak love before, you just have to look at the picture below to understand how I feel. I also preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

I heated the canola oil with the remaining tbsp butter in my grill pan over high heat, then threw the steak on to sear all over.

I put it in the oven to finish off for about 15 minutes (for a nice medium rare), then set it aside to rest, tented with foil. While all the lovely juices were redistributing through the steak, I turned my attention back to the sauce.

I added the now-cooled shallot-tarragon reduction to the egg yolks, and blended with my immersion blender. With the blender running, I poured in about 1/3 of the melted butter and blended it until thoroughly mixed (I believe the term is "emulsified"). Then I added the rest of the butter and continued to blend. Yeah, this is not really a diet-friendly dish - I had to spend a few extra minutes at the gym today to compensate, but I feel like the trade-off was worth it. I seasoned with about 1 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper and set aside in a warm place for a couple of minutes until the steak was ready.

Once the steak was properly rested, I topped it with the luscious Béarnaise (and a side of greens, just to make myself feel better). I like how very simple it was to make this sauce, yet the decadent result made me feel like I had accomplished something spectacular. While this isn't something I can justify eating all the time, I'm looking forward to having it again as a special treat. And I think I'll be experimenting with the other French sauces in the future now, too!

Comments

[miguel]

I'm sort of a purist, too. I should branch out more often. This sounds tasty.

[Angela]

Miguel-
I can't think of a single time I've ever ordered or made steak with sauce on it - I kind of wonder what else I've been missing out on over the years! This is pretty darned good, and I think it would work wonders if you have a cheaper cut of meat.

[miguel]

thanks for the tip.

[Kim]

this entry is like the key to my heart.

[Angela]

HA! Thanks, Kim. I think Mark felt the same way when I made this again for him last night. I only wish I had had the energy to make up some frites to go with.