25 Days of Nourishing Traditions: Butter Sauce (Beurre Blanc)

Well this recipe was certainly on my “must make” list as soon as I saw it!

Beurre Blanc is a traditional French sauce for fish. It’s delicious! This recipe is found on page 153 of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon.

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Ingredients

6 tablespoons shallots minced
6 tablespoons dry white wine
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¹⁄₂ cup butter preferably raw, cut into pieces
pinch of sea salt and pepper

Instructions

Put the shallots, wine, and lemon juice into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

Reduce this liquid to about 2 tablespoons.

Then, strain it into a small bowl. I just put it into some cheesecloth, and squeezed.

Now you’re supposed to place the bowl into a pan of hot water, which I’m assuming means a pan large enough to put your bowl inside, but I just kinda went — whatever — and stuck the bowl on top of my tiny sauce pan filled with water. I figured I was kind of making a ghetto double-boiler. The point is to not have the butter sauce directly touching the heat.

Then, you are to add in the butter just a little chunk at a time, whisking as you go. The reason why this process is treated so delicately is because in order to retain the enzymes of the raw butter, it needs to be heated slowly and at a low, indirect temperature. My butter was unfortunately regular ol’ pasteurized store-bought stuff, so I didn’t feel a need to be all that delicate with it.

Once all the butter is melted and whisked in, the sauce should have thickened somewhat and look a little frothy.

Remove it from the heat as soon as it’s at that point, and serve it immediately.

How’d it go?

Well, I ran into a bit of a problem as I was preparing this — I only had about 3 tablespoons left of my cooking wine. So, I decided that since I really love the flavor of lemon, I’d just add in more lemon juice to even it out. Ehh… I won’t be doing that next time. My sauce was downright sour — which was okay for me since I do love my lemon, but I know it wasn’t the way beurre blanc is supposed to taste. Bummer.

How we liked it

Even though I messed it up with the lemon overload, we both thought it was really good! I mean, honestly… it’s pretty hard to screw up a recipe that consists of like 90% butter, enough to make it not taste good. This butter sauce made my plain, overcooked baked mahi delicious!