Perfecting sauces often proves to be one of the more difficult tasks budding cooks face, but if they can master sauces then they can often transform nice meals into flavoursome feasts fit for lords and ladies, the sauce spearheading the delicious attack on sensory receptors.

Now that we’ve acknowledged this hurdle, let’s have a go at the beurre blanc, one of the simplest sauces. This is particularly useful as it provides easy, essential practice in creating a wine reduction and emulsification – two very important saucy techniques.

Ingredients: (serves 4)

2 shallots, finely chopped
25 cl white wine (traditionally Muscadet)
100-120g unsalted butter
1 tbsp double cream
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
A handful of tarragon or dill, chopped (optional)

Preparation & Cooking:

Start by creating the white wine reduction. To do this, add your wine, shallots, lemon juice and three quarters of your chopped herb – saving the rest for the later – to the saucepan before putting it on a high heat. Allow the liquid to boil off, until there are about two tablespoons of liquid remaining, this is called ‘reducing’ and is a fundamental technique of saucery. Get good at it!

At this stage there is a personal choice to be made. Traditionally, the wine reduction is strained or poured through a sieve to remove the shallots, this is isn’t entirely necessary but a smooth beurre blanc is much nicer, in my opinion.

Add the cream, return the liquid to a boil and then reduce to a low heat. Next, begin to add the butter, whisking in one cube at a time. After the first couple of cubes have been added, you can take the pan off the heat, occasionally returning if the butter struggles to melt. Continue whisking the sauce until it emulsifies. It should thicken nicely, lifting the whisk from the sauce should trace out pale trails on the surface (coming soon: a photo of this). If this is not the case, and the sauce remains too runny, add a little more butter.

Add any chopped herbs that you might have, particularly if you have strained the sauce, even if just for presentation purposes –  a small amount of colour goes a long way. Dill is particularly effective when serving the sauce with fish (Trevor Trout). Finally, season with salt and pepper to taste.

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Technicalities:

Emulsion is the term used to describe the result of mixing two substances that don’t mix under normal circumstances. In this case, the emulsion is the butter and wine reduction mixture. Emulsification is aided by what is called an emulsifying agent or emulsifier, these are substances that are rammed full of protein molecules that prevent molecules of either ingredient coupling together. Egg yolk and mustard are two of the most widely used emulsifiers. In the beurre blanc, however, the milk content of the butter proves sufficient and no additional emulsifier is necessary.
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