How NYC's Best Eggs Benedict is Made

[upbeat music]

Welcome to Delmonico's.

I'm Executive Chef Adam Plitt.

Today we're here to make the perfect eggs Benedict.

[bell rings]

There's such a rich history here at Delmonico's.

This is the first fine dining restaurant in America.

So many famous dishes were made here,

one of them being eggs Benedict.

There's been many renditions of the eggs Benedict.

Here at Delmonico's,

we use brioche, pasture-raised eggs,

and applewood-smoked ham.

We finish the eggs Benedict with a lovely bearnaise.

The most important part of this dish is the sauce.

Let's get started.

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Traditionally, eggs Benedict has hollandaise.

Your hollandaise has your lemon juice

and cayenne and clarified butter.

The bearnaise is a rendition of hollandaise.

The difference is that it has diced shallots,

crushed black peppercorn, and tarragon.

To make the sauce,

dice this shallot like you would dice an onion.

Mince it very small

because when we reduce it,

we want those chunks of shallot in the sauce.

Eggs Benedict is notoriously a very rich dish.

At Delmonico's, we like the bearnaise

'cause it offers a little bit of contrast

from the richness of the egg

and the buttery brioche and the ham.

I like the chunks of black pepper and the acidity

from the chunks of shallots.

The shallots will absorb the acidity

from the wine and the vinegar.

And as you eat the dish,

you'll get little flavor spikes from that.

And we have our tarragon here.

The tarragon offers a nice floral note

to the end of the dish.

Really brings everything together.

We're going to take the leaves off the tarragon,

take the stem, put it in our reduction.

Reserve these leaves for later for our finished sauce.

So we're going to add our cracked black pepper.

We don't want whole peppercorn,

so we're biting on a whole peppercorn.

It'll be softened by the reduction

and by the sauce,

but we want to feel the black pepper in here,

which is why we don't finely grind it.

Next, we'll add our white wine.

This will add acidity.

Some people use straight vinegar.

I like the flavor of white wine reduced with the shallots.

This is just regular cooking white wine

'cause you don't want to buy the cheapest thing,

but something that you like the flavor of.

You're going to add a couple drops of red wine vinegar

for a little extra acidity,

and we're going to put it on the stove to reduce.

We're going to bring this up to a boil,

and we don't want it to burn around the edges

'cause that will affect the flavor of the wine.

We're just going to boil it down.

It's about three-quarters.

Reserving a little liquid.

This will cook the shallots,

soften the black pepper,

bring out the flavor of the tarragon stem,

and cook out all the alcohol in the wine as well.

Eggs Benedict was founded by the chef

of Delmonico's at the time,

Charles Ranhofer,

arguably the first celebrity chef here in New York City.

Chef Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean,

and that was the first instance

in which you would see eggs Benedict.

There was a guest by the name of Mrs. LeGrand Benedict.

She requested something special from the kitchen.

So Chef Ranhofer whipped up what we now know today

as eggs Benedict.

So this has been simmering for about five minutes.

As you can see,

the wine and vinegar all reduced down.

The shallots are nice and soft.

So this is right where we want to take it off.

While we're here, I'm going to melt the butter.

Some people use clarified butter in this sauce,

I use unsalted whole butter.

I like the flavor of it better.

For this process,

we're actually going to want to boil this butter

and get it very, very hot.

Everyone is afraid of their bearnaise breaking.

The reason why it breaks is either from temperature

or not enough water content for the emulsion to hold.

Adding those milk solids will help hold that emulsion.

The butter's in a good boil now.

We're ready to move over to the blender

and put our sauce together.

If you're making this dish home,

I highly suggest you use the blender.

You won't have to sit there

and whisk over a double boiler.

This is what we find

that makes the sauce super consistent,

holds together per service.

Chances of it breaking are less.

It will make your life a lot easier.

The first thing we're going to do

is drain our reduction out.

We want to reserve the liquid for the sauce itself,

and we're going to leave those tarragon stems

in that pot.

Or if they come out, we'll remove them.

And we're going to set aside

the shallots and the black pepper

to fold into our sauce at the end

so we get those chunks.

We don't want to puree them in with the sauce.

We want to feel the chunks in the sauce.

So we're going to take our egg yolks.

We're going to put them in the blender.

Eggs are a natural emulsifier,

which will hold the reduction and fat together

in a homogenized mixture.

Now we're going to add the reduction to the sauce,

and we're going to add a couple teaspoons of mustard.

Adds a little bit of tang and flavor to the sauce,

and it also strengthens that emulsion even more.

We're also going to add a little bit of salt,

and we don't want to finish it completely with salt.

We'll adjust the seasoning towards the end.

If we add too much at this stage,

we can never take it out.

So I'm just going to put the blender on low.

We're just looking to homogenize the mixture together

and get everything really well whipped up

before we whip in our hot butter.

So we have our boiling butter here.

We're going to slowly drizzle that in.

Key part to this is that the butter is hot

so that we can cook the egg as we blend it.

That will ensure that the emulsion stays even stronger.

The whole point of this process

is to make sure that your sauce does not break.

As this sauce gets thicker,

we're going to raise the speed

of the blender just a little bit

[blender whirring]

so you can hear that strong emulsion in the blender.

As you add your butter, you want to do it slowly.

Listen to the sound of the blender as it thickens.

If you get your sauce too thick,

there will not be enough liquid

in the emulsion to hold, so it will break.

It's better to go thinner than thicker.

You can always add a little bit more.

This is exactly what we're looking for.

Coats the back of the spoon.

This will hold really well in a warm place.

You can also heat it up slowly,

being careful to whisk it the entire time.

And you don't want to get it too, too hot.

If it gets too hot, you can risk breaking it.

At this point,

we're going to mix in our shallots and black pepper.

This is what we reserved from the reduction

and strained out.

This is a preference thing.

It depends on how much you like.

We like a lot here.

It adds flavor to the dish.

I think this is what really makes

the bearnaise special.

You go to a lot of places

and they just chop tarragon

and put it in hollandaise

and call it bearnaise.

This, to me, is what really sets it off.

Here we have that nice deep rich color

from those pasture-raised eggs.

We're going to add a little bit more salt.

Cover the sauce.

We put it up in a warm place over the stove

while we prep the rest of our dish.

[gentle music]

For eggs Benedict here at Delmonico's,

we use brioche.

I think this is the perfect bread.

We bake this fresh here.

It's from an enriched dough.

We're going to take the crust off here,

and we're going to slice a nice thick slice right here.

So the crumb of the bread is really buttery

and really, really soft.

As you toast it,

it just gets even softer,

'cause the butter in the bread

kind of softens a little bit.

It is important to have enough bread

to support the lot of sauce and the runny egg.

A nice thick cut is what I recommend.

By using brioche instead of an English muffin,

it's a little bit softer of a texture.

It's a little more buttery.

It's just a difference of flavor.

So here at Delmonico's,

we're going to use a ring cutter,

not something you have to do at home.

It just makes for a really nice presentation.

We just want the inside.

I don't want any crust.

We save this for when we make our crab cakes,

but you can freeze it,

save it for breadcrumbs, whatever you want.

So now that we have our brioche rounds cut,

we're going to set them aside

and we're going to get our ham ready.

So this is a triple applewood-smoked ham.

Traditionally, it's Canadian bacon.

You can use Black Forest,

whatever your favorite ham is.

The ham is super thinly sliced.

It's really nice and delicate.

It's easier to cut against that soft brioche.

And the egg really, really coats every single piece.

So we're going to take the ham,

and we're going to make a little rose out of it.

That's going to prevent the egg from sliding off.

We want everything ready to go

before we poach our eggs.

So we have that nice rose

with a little hole in the middle.

We're going to put it in the 350-degree oven

and get it nice and warm.

Get a little crispiness on the outside.

So next, we're going to brush the brioche

with a little bit of regular unsalted butter, both sides.

The nice part about this

versus putting the butter in the pan

is that the butter will not burn as easily.

The bread absorbs the butter a little bit,

and then it'll crisp up nicely in the pan.

So we have a nice hot pan here,

and we're going to toast our brioche

and just get a nice golden color.

And since we painted the brioche with the butter,

we don't have to worry about burning

only a portion of the bread and not getting it toasted.

We toast it nice and evenly.

Flip here.

Nice golden color,

and then we'll toast the other side.

That's it.

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Everything's ready to go.

Now we just have to poach our eggs.

This is another tricky part of this.

We want to make sure we cook our eggs properly

with a nice set white

and a nice liquid, custardy yolk.

Essentially, almost boil the egg without the shell.

We're going to take a little bit of white vinegar

and pour it in a pot.

The white vinegar will help coagulate

the protein of the white,

which will protect the yolk and cook it more evenly.

These are pasture-raised eggs,

really nice quality eggs.

The yolk is beautifully orange.

A lot of nutrients in these,

not like the typical eggs you see at the grocery store.

I crack the eggs in a separate container.

It makes it easier.

You make sure that the egg is completely whole.

The yolk's not broken.

Two to a container.

I don't recommend any more than that.

We're going to have the water just under boiling,

and that will slowly cook the egg.

If it's rolling too hard,

it could possibly break the egg apart as it goes in.

I'm going to give it a little swirl with a whisk.

That's going to create a little vortex,

and I'm gonna drop the eggs in one at a time.

Give it a swirl.

You want it to drop in nice and gently.

The vortex will help keep the white

and the yolk in the center

and encapsulate that yolk in one solid piece.

So now we're going to let it cook

for about two or three minutes.

It's a different preference for everyone

on how they like their egg cooked.

Here we're going to go with a nice runny egg yolk.

If you like it more cooked,

obviously cook it a little bit more.

Another method is to pre-poach your eggs

and put them in ice water.

And then all you need to do is dip 'em in hot water,

and they're ready to roll.

So I'm testing to see if the eggs are ready.

The white is firm.

The yolk is soft.

You can tell that it's definitely liquidy in there by feel,

but it's nice and set.

It's exactly what we're looking for.

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So we're going to assemble our dish.

We'll take our nice toasted brioche,

take our ham, our nice warm ham over the top.

Keep that nice rose in the middle,

a nice hole for our eggs.

We blotted our eggs dry,

nice and hot, perfectly cooked.

We have some freshly chopped tarragon.

We're going to add that to our sauce.

We kept the sauce warm this entire time.

It's beautiful, velvety, nice and rich.

[gentle music]

We'll finish with a little bit of sliced chive,

and that's it.

Eggs Benedict.

A simple dish elevated the Delmonico's way.

The yolk is perfectly cooked.

The brioche is nice and soft underneath.

[gentle music]

Delicious.

We get the acidity of the sauce,

creaminess of the egg,

the nice richness of the ham.

This is a simple preparation of eggs that's truly luxurious.

There's a lot of dishes that people make and reinvent,

and stand the test of time.

This is definitely one of 'em

created right here at Delmonico's.

It's an honor to be a part of the tradition here.

A dish that was started here,

founded here, and continues to live on to this day.