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Long considered too fancy for home cooking, French sauces are actually super accessible to home chefs. This recipe for beurre blanc is the perfect sauce to serve with fish, steak, or vegetables and is surprisingly easy to make at home!
Why not try serving your beurre blanc sauce over Poached Salmon? Or drizzle a little of your sauce over Roasted Green Beans for the ultimate vegetable side dish!
Beurre Blanc
Buerre blanc is another one of those warm, nourishing, and intensely rich French sauces that are often served at fancy restaurants alongside fish or steak.
Similar in concept to a hollandaise, buerre blanc (which just means “white butter”) is a simple sauce made from a flavored wine reduction, cream, and lots and lots of butter!
Instead of having to wait until your next fancy meal, why not learn how to make this surprisingly easy sauce yourself?
How To Know When You Have Reduced The Liquid Enough
One of the main things that separate this sauce from many others is the use of white wine and lemon juice reduction.
This is made by cooking very finely minced shallots in wine and lemon juice until most of the water and cooked away.
The aim of doing this is to not only reduce the water level but also to burn off the alcohol. It also gives time for the shallots to almost disintegrate into the liquid, flavoring everything with shallot-y goodness.
One problem, though, is that it can be kind of tricky to anticipate exactly when the liquid has reduced enough.
If you don’t cook it enough, the sauce will be too liquidy and will probably break.
Reduce it too much, and you can get a lot of burned flavors that you definitely don’t want.
Keep Watch On The Sauce Closely
The best way to only reduce it the right amount is to keep a really careful eye on it and move on to the next step in the recipe the moment you start to see dry spots developing.
When it stops looking like a pool of liquid with shallots in it and starts to look more like a slightly wet pan filled with shallot bits, you can safely start adding the butter.
Do You Really Need To Use So Much Butter?
This is one of those recipes that a lot of people will most likely immediately think that there is way too much butter, and you might be tempted to reduce it.
However, this sauce is called buerre blanc for a reason! It is, first and foremost, a butter sauce! If you reduce the butter, you will probably end up with a watery and unflavorful sauce.
You can really notice the impact of the butter if you use a really expensive, cultured butter – the taste of the culture will really shine through, and it will taste way more buttery and unctuous.
This is just one of those times when you should not worry about the quantity of butter and just enjoy it!
Could You Replace The Shallots With A Different Type Of Onion?
This recipe calls for the use of some really, very finely minced shallots, which then get almost boiled in a mixture of white wine and lemon juice to help develop their flavor.
Not everyone happens to have shallots on hand, though, so could you just swap in an onion?
Well, you could certainly use something like a regular white onion instead of a shallot, as long as you keep in mind that shallots and onions are considered different for a reason!
As long as you really very finely mince the onion into tiny pieces, it should work just fine, but the taste will be noticeably more “oniony.”
It will also be just that little bit less sweet, so you might consider adding a tiny pinch of sugar to help compensate for that.
Other than that, it should work fine, as long as you cook it just a little bit longer, as onion takes a bit longer to break down when compared to shallots.
Looking for more rich and buttery Marinades, Sauces & Salad Dressings recipes? Try these out:
• How To make Blender Hollandaise Sauce
Happy Cooking
Love,
Karlynn
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Beurre Blanc
Ingredients
- ½ cup dry white wine (like a Sauvignon Blanc)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons very finely minced shallots
- ½ cup cold unsalted butter (cut into 1 inch cubes)
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper (or white pepper)
- salt to taste
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan add the wine, lemon juice, cream, and shallots over a medium high heat. Bring to a simmer.
- Reduce the heat to medium and let it simmer for about 4-5 minutes until the liquid is reduced by about 75%.
- Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and whisk in 2 cubes of butter. Keep stirring until the butter is completely melted and combined.
- Add a few more cubes, whisking continuously so the butter is combined well into the mixture. Continue to add remaining butter, a few cubes at a time, until the sauce has a thick, smooth texture, about 4 to 6 minutes.
- Remove the saucepan from heat. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.
- Serve over fish, poultry or vegetables!
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