I love hollandaise. I love it on asparagus, salmon, and broccoli. Sometimes I make hollandaise and then I add some cream and orange juice instead of lemon and use it on other fish. Hollandaise takes patience. I usually make mine in a pan and I start by melting butter and adding egg yolks and lemon juice, cooking over super low heat and constantly stirring, and then adding more butter at the end. I like it to be very thick.

I was intrigued when I saw Martha make easy hollandaise in the blender on her show the other day. She put in the egg yolks, lemon juice and warm water with salt and made it frothy in the blender. Then she poured in melted butter, which she suggested you cool first, slightly. She whizzed that up and supposedly it was ready.

I was leery of this – if you do it in the blender and cool the butter, how will the egg cook? I was willing to try it though.

The first problem was that once I had the egg, lemon juice and water in the blender, it did not come up to the bottom of the blades in mixer! I couldn’t froth it! Mr. MarthaAndMe wisely whipped out the little latte frother Dude Martha got in his Christmas stocking and stuck it in there and got it to froth. Whew. Then I added the butter in a slow stream (and I did use HOT butter and did not cool it as Martha suggested on TV).  The recipe says to blend until it thickens. Mine did not thicken and it was not hot or even very warm to the touch. Finally I gave up, dumped it in a sauce pan and cooked it on the stove quickly.  This got it to thicken up and I was certain the eggs were properly cooked.

I guess I wouldn’t recommend this method. It is faster than the traditional method, but it seemed to lack something in its consistency and did not have the same velvety texture. I also would not serve this straight from the blender without heating it up, so you would end up using a blender and a pan. Too much fuss for me.