How to Make Butterless Béarnaise Sauce

Hello this is chef John for foodwishes.com with butterless béarnaise sauce. Yes, I think I’ve done it, butterless béarnaise which is no easy feat considering béarnaise is 80% butter so here we go, I’ve got a couple egg yolks, anice big spoon of freshly ground pepper, very key. The secret ingredient that makes this all work, tarragon Dijon but you’re going to have to go to the fancy food store and find that or order it online. Every pantry and/or refrigerator should have a jar of tarragon mustard, I use it for a lot of things and now some liquid, we’re going to do a little bit of white wine vinegar. If you could find tarragon vinegar, even better but anyway wine vinegar will work and a splash of water also key because there’s no butter. So we’re going to use water instead and the obligatory pinch of salt. Okay whisk this up and basically we’re almost done. We’re going to bring this over to the stove and you’re going to set your burner to a low heat. Watch me turn it down, it was medium, now it’s low. You’re going to put a stainless steel bowl directly over that very low heat. Don’t worry, it’s not going to burn, what you’re going to do is you’re going to start whisking it over that very low heat and see I kind of raise it up a little bit and lower it and raise it and lower and raise it to adjust the amount of heat getting in there. So I’m just going to keep whisking and whisking and whisking and it’s going to go through a couple of stages. First, you’re going to get this slight little kind of foam on top, you see that, it’s kind of foamy. It’s not really thick yet. Then you’re going to see little wisps of steam and then you know you’re getting close and again you can always raise it up off the flame if you think it’s getting too hot. Because there’s no egg white in there, it’s not really going to scramble. Alright, it will get too thick and kind of stick to the bowl but you don’t have to worry about like any sudden scrambled egg effect. So after the wisps of steam, you’re going to see it start to thicken and kind of look like béarnaise and we don’t have to go too far here. You’re just going to basically make it hot or almost hot. If it got really hot, it probably would be too thick, we’re just going to heat it, cook those egg yolks a little bit and that is pretty much butterless béarnaise. I know I can't believe it either. What you’re going to do here, as soon as you think it’s done and I think mine’s done. You see it’s thick, it’s kind of hot to the touch, beautiful black pepper specks, the tarragon mustard in there, I’m going to bring it over to the cutting board and before I spoon it over my steak, I’m going to give it a nice whisk just to aerate it a little bit, make it a little fluffier and that’s it. Onto the steak it goes and yes, busted, that is a piece of leftover prime rib. You may remember that prime rib from such videos as prime rib but look at that flowing over the meat. Unbelievable. That’s not even slow motion by the way, that’s real flowing sauce. I’m going to cut into this. Man I really shouldn’t be eating all this butter, wait, there’s no butter in it. Alright and that was delicious, light, tangy, very herby with the tarragon and if you can't find tarragon mustard, you could just use some Dijon and a lot of finely finely chopped tarragon, fresh tarragon and if you want to go the extra step and put some fresh tarragon in this, sure, go ahead. If you want to put a little bit of shallot, sure go ahead. But this is just a really quick, really easy, really nice sauce for steak that has no butter. Did I mention no butter? Butterless béarnaise, give it a try. Go to the site, I’ve got the amounts there. This is going to make enough for about two steaks, 2 to 4 and as always enjoy.