This Recipe includes
| Butter |
| Shallot onions |
| White wine vinegar (or cider vinegar) |
| Dry white wine |
| (Optional) Fine herbs eg. thyme, basil, or parsley |
| Salt and pepper |
Why we love it
You may have had it at a high-end restaurant before: delicately baked fish topped off with a decadent French beurre blanc sauce. If that sounds absolutely delicious, and you want to try to recreate that recipe at home, you’ve come to the right place.
One of famous French sauces, the classic beurre blanc sauce recipe is made by mixing white wine with melted butter, until it emulsifies. It is sometimes called the beurre blanc nantais or beurre nantais.
Its rich and creamy flavor makes it a perfect pairing for all kinds of seafood, from crab and lobster, to almost any type of fish. If you are a seafood lover, this is heaven!
Pronounced “burr blã“, beurre blanc literally translates to “white butter” in English. And the best part is that a beurre blanc sauce is rather easy to make at home.
If you take melted butter and mix in some wine and eschalots (shallot onions), you’ve got yourself the base of a beurre blanc sauce. The butter used is usually French butter, but you can use what you have available.
Beurre Blanc versus other sauces
Legend has it that famed French chef Clémence Lefeuvre (née Clémence Prau) in the early 20th century, accidentally prepared this sauce in her restaurant in the Loire Valley by “forgetting” a few ingredients.
The rumor is that she intended to prepare a hollandaise or béarnaise sauce, but forgot to add the egg yolks and the tarragon. (Women never get proper credit, do they?).
The difference in between the sauces is summarized as follows:
- Buerre blanc: sauce made from butter, vinegar or white while, and shallots.
- Hollandaise: sauce made from butter, egg yolk, and lemon juice.
- Béaranaise: sauce made from butter, egg yolk, white wine vinegar, tarragon, and herbs.
As well, the hollandaise is a French mother sauce and similar to mayonnaise, it isn’t all that similar in taste to the beurre blanc. A beurre blanc is usually a sauce reserved for seafood, while the hollandaise and béarnaise can be used on just about anything.
Cooking without alcohol
The traditional beurre blanc recipe is prepared with a dry white wine, usually muscadet from the Loire Valley. However, if you are serving the sauce to children or people who don’t drink alcohol, you may want to skip the wine. In this case, you can replace the wine with an equivalent amount of water, and the vinegar with the juice of half a lemon.
Should you take out the shallot onions before serving the sauce?
No, you do not have to take out the shallot onions before serving. You can strain them out if you don’t like the texture, or leave them in for extra flavor.
What dishes to serve beurre blanc with?
Beurre blanc is a classic sauce of French cuisine that is traditionally served with seafood like shellfish like shrimp, crab and lobster, or poached fish like pike, salmon, and codfish.
What drinks to serve with it?
A white wine from Burgundy like Côte de Beaune or Chardonnay will be ideal with a beurre blanc sauce served with fish.
How to store it?
A beurre blanc has to be served immediately after being prepared, because otherwise the butter will separate from the rest of the sauce. It is best to serve it warm after preparation.
Recipe: Beurre Blanc Sauce
Equipment
Ingredients
- 160 g Butter
- 2 small eschalot shallot onions
- 1/2 cup of dry white wine eg. Muscadet from Loire
- 3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
- Pinch of salt and pepper
- Optional Fine herbs eg. thyme, basil, or parsley
Instructions
- Peel and chop the eschalots into fine pieces.
- Combine the the minced eschalots in the vinegar and white wine in a small heavy-bottom saucepan
- Cook at a low temperature, until lightly brown.
- Add the butter and whisk vigorously.
- Season to your liking with salt, pepper, and any herbs.
- Serve immediately while warm.
Notes
Nutrition
If you enjoyed that, check out our other classic French recipes that are easy to prepare. Bon appétit and à bientôt !
