Delia’s Heavenly Eggs Benedict

Submitted by ncmysteryshopper

"Eggs Benedict is one of my favorite breakfast dishes. It was created at the Waldorf Hotel in 1894, for a customer hoping to find a cure for his morning hangover. I thought it was one of those dishes that should only be ordered in a restaurant until I found this recipe. Keep in mind that your eggs should be fresh and no more then 4 days old for perfect results. It is not as hard as it looks and what could be better then starting your day with a lightly toasted English muffin with a perfectly poached egg in a cloud of buttery hollandaise! Sheer heaven!"

 

• Ready In: 27mins
• Ingredients: 10
• Yields: 6 as starter
• Serves: 3

ingredients

• Hollandaise Sauce

• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 1⁄2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 1⁄2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
• 4 ounces butter
• salt
• black pepper, Freshly milled

• Eggs Benedict

• 6 large very fresh eggs
• 12 slices pancetta, grilled until crisp
• 3 English muffins, split in half
• butter

directions

1. Heat lemon juice and vinegar in a small saucepan just until the mixture starts to bubble and simmer. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks in the small bowl of your food processor (or in blender) and season with a smidgen of salt and pepper. Blend for one minute. Once the lemon juice/vinegar has come to a simmer turn your processor or blender back on. VERY slowly add the hot liquid in a small stream to the egg yolks while the food processor of blender is running.
2. Using the same saucepan, melt butter over a VERY gentle heat. Do not allow butter to turn brown. When butter foams, turn the processor or blender back on and pour in the butter in a thin, SLOW, steady trickle. The slower you add it the better. Clean the bowl with a spatula and add to the sauce and pulse once.
3. The key to a perfect poached egg is to keep the water at a bare simmer throughout the cooking. Place a small frying pan over gentle heat and add enough boiling water to fill it to 1 inch. Keep the heat gentle.
4. Once you see tiny bubbles on the bottom of the pan, carefully break the eggs, one at a time, into the water and let them barely simmer, without covering, for exactly 1 minute. Use a timer.
5. After one minute, remove the pan from the heat and let the eggs sit in the hot water and set timer for 10 minutes. This timing will give perfect results for a beautifully translucent, perfectly set white and a soft, creamy yolk.
6. Remove eggs, one at a time, with slotted spoon and let the spoon rest for a few seconds on a sheet of paper towel to absorb the excess water.
7. When the pancetta is cooked, keep it on a warm plate while you lightly toast the split muffins on both sides. Butter the muffins and place them on the baking tray, then top each half with two slices of pancetta. Put a poached egg on top of each muffin half and spoon over the hollandaise, covering the egg (there should be a little over 1 tablespoon of sauce for each egg).
8. Flash the Eggs Benedict under the grill for just 25-30 seconds, as close to the heat as possible, but don't take your eyes off them – they need to be tinged golden and no more. This should just glaze the surface of the hollandaise.
9. Serve immediately on hot plates.

Reviews

[KarenAnnJones]

Great recipe. I used Canadian bacon though. The sauce was perfect and much easier than I had thought. It was my first time making hollandaise sauce. Amazingly we had some sauce left over and tried to heat it up the next day. It didn't work. Just make it fresh everytime. It's worth it. I used a mini food processor which I think was the key to the perfect sauce.

 

[DDW]

Made this for my husband's birthday breakfast. Yummy! I was skeptical about the sauce on first taste but once it was all put together and broiled it is a great combination. I used Canadian bacon slices and tried the method for poaching and I messed something up because some of our egg whites were WAY too soft. I will use my own method of poaching next time when making this recipe. My husband was a happy camper and this one is a keeper.

 

[Chef Boyamhungry]

By no means do I blame the recipe, I think I just butchered it. This was my first eggs benedict recipe I attempted and then I did this first thing in the morning. I honestly had a difficult time, between following the instructions exactly and being alone with my toddler (he gets scared by the blender I had to constantly keep him occupied), but that's me. It tasted great, but it took me more than an hour to finally finish this recipe. In the first, I probably should have blended the yolks in the blender before heating the vinegar and lemon juice, because when I did it the other way around, it evaporated, so I had to do that over again. Everything else was easy for me to follow, up to the poached eggs. I followed the directions exactly, and the eggs were not even close to being cooked. So being hungry and distracted by my toddler, I decided to just nook another set of eggs in boiling water and made sure they were pooched to my liking. Then, by the time I lightly toasted my egg muffins and cooked my bacon (I don't even know what pancetta is), the hollandaise sauce in the blender was solid, so then I had to add water to make it liquid again and blend it. By the time I assembled the toasted muffin, bacon, egg, and sauce, I lost half my appetite. If I'm going to do this recipe again, I'm going to eat a snack and make sure my husband is home with me to attend to my son. Otherwise, I'm going to look for an easier recipe. Again, I don't think it's the recipe that's bad. I should've played around with recipes that were like Eggs Benedict for Dummies. I would recommend this for people that are better cooks and not for beginners like me or if you are in a rush to eat. I really enjoyed the taste though. Maybe I just need help. Sorry for the lower rating.

 

[SweetsLady]

Yummy! Loved the sauce! I tried to do the poached eggs, but I don't think I had the water hot enough so I ended up doing fried eggs. I used thin sliced ham instead of pancetta. Thanks for the great recipe! It was devoured!

 

[Kittencalrecipezazz]

Wow this is a great Benedict! I used bacon in place of the pancetta, thanks NC!...Kitten