Light Hollandaise Sauce – If you’re anything like me, you LOVE hollandaise sauce, but you DON’T love all the calories and saturated fat. This recipe gives you a better option. It’s lightened up, and best of all, it’s all-natural!
I’ve had a long-time love for hollandaise sauce with its creamy richness and pop of lemon.
It’s no wonder that it’s so delicious, as it’s traditionally made with 3-4 egg yolks and nearly a pound of butter! Such a sauce doesn’t belong on this blog, with its aim to provide seasonal, healthy (or at least mostly healthy) recipes.
The “no hollandaise” thing is especially sad in the spring, when I start craving Eggs Benedict and asparagus drowned in Hollandaise goodness!
I recently decided to get creative and lighten up my hollandaise sauce, so that I can enjoy it from time-to-time without it being like eating a stick of butter. This was challenging, as the butter and the egg yolks hold each other together, forming the body of the sauce, not to mention the creamy richness.
In my recipe I ended up replacing almost all of the butter with olive oil, sour cream, and water. The end result was an all-natural sauce that’s still rich and creamy, but much lower in saturated fat and calories!
Light Hollandaise Sauce
Serves: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 egg yolks from free-range eggs
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 1/8 tsp paprika
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 pinches of black pepper
- 1/4 C water
- 1/4 C sour cream
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp lemon zest
- 1/4 C fresh chives
Directions
1. In an uncoated pan, melt 1 Tbsp of butter while continuously beating together with 2 tsp of olive oil and two egg yolks. You’ll end up with a thick, yellow sauce. To do this I borrowed a tiny whisk from my son’s kitchen toy set and it work perfectly. I’m pretty sure they sell them at kitchen supply stores for adult use too…
2. Beat in your lemon juice, lemon zest, paprika, salt, and pepper.
3. Add 1/4 cup of water to the pan and bring to a gentle simmer while continuously beating. Once you have reached a simmer, remove your sauce from the heat.
4. Once the sauce has stopped simmering, whisk 1/4 C sour cream into your mixture until evenly combined and there are no lumps.
5. Garnish your Light Hollandaise Sauce with chives and you’re ready to serve.
Serving Suggestions:
- This is delicious on my Spinach Potato Cakes with Parmesan.
- Serve on eggs. This is most delicious on poached and sunny-side up.
- Serve on top of cod fish cooked in a 350º oven with steamed broccoli.
- Sauté one bunch of asparagus with 1 tsp olive oil, add salt and pepper to taste, and top with hollandaise.
- 2 egg yolks from free-range eggs
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp butter
- ⅛ tsp paprika
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 2 pinches of black pepper
- ¼ C water
- ¼ C sour cream
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- ¼ tsp lemon zest
- ¼ C fresh chives
- In an uncoated pan, melt 1 Tbsp of butter while continuously beating together with 2 tsp of olive oil and two egg yolks. You'll end up with a thick, yellow sauce. To do this I borrowed a tiny whisk from my son's kitchen toy set and it work perfectly. I'm pretty sure they sell them at kitchen supply stores for adult use too...
- Beat in your lemon juice, lemon zest, paprika, salt, and pepper.
- Add ¼ cup of water to the pan and bring to a gentle simmer while continuously beating. Once you have reached a simmer, remove your sauce from the heat.
- Once the sauce has stopped simmering, whisk ¼ C sour cream into your mixture until evenly combined and there are no lumps.
- Garnish your Light Hollandaise Sauce with chives and you're ready to serve.
More homemade sauce recipes to try…
Homemade Duck Sauce
Homemade Cajun Remoulade Sauce
Homemade Tartar Sauce
Yum! I love hollandaise sauce so I will have to try your lightened up version! Thanks for sharing dear!
Thanks! With trying to eat healthier, I’ve found that some things are just too good to completely give up!
This is awesome! Sure don’t feel deprived with this sauce!!!
Thanks Carol! I’m happy to hear that you enjoyed this recipe!
Hi! I was wondering how well this sauce saves and re-heats? Any tips?
Honestly… hollandaise isn’t the best reheating sauce. Have you ever had hollandaise off of a buffet? It gets kind of weird. If you need to make it advance because of a time crunch I recommend reheating it slowly while constantly stirring. If it’s too think add a little water, one teaspoon at a time, until you reach the right consistency.
This is good, but it’s VERY lemony. I’ll probably half the juice next time. I did’t use zest either. Just a warning to those who don’t want a strong lemon flavor on their eggs. It would however be excellent with fish!
I’m sorry to hear that your hollandaise turned out undesirably lemony. I do like a hollandaise sauce in which some lemon shines through, but when I’ve made this in the past I wouldn’t characterize it as being “strong,” so I’m guessing we both had some variance in our lemons. As it is with cooking with fresh ingredients, flavors can change based on the freshness and time of year the produce was harvested. Thanks for the heads up for other readers!
Just want to thank you for this recipe! I left out the lemon zest and used plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and it was delicious. I love hollandaise so it was really nice to find a tasty light version
Thanks for letting me know that this recipe work out for you. I LOVE hollandaise too!
I usually make Hollandaise in the blender using warm butter. It takes about 30 seconds. I’m wondering if you think it would work to warm the oil butter mixture, pouring it into the yolks like pouring in the warm butter. I’m too lazy to spend the time to double boiler, whisk,whisk,whisk.
The blender method will likely work. Just be sure that you get the oil-butter mixture good and hot. Blend the yolks into the hot butter-oil until fully emulsified and then add in the sour cream last, otherwise the eggs won’t cook.
I have coronary artery disease and love hollandaise sauce.
I make ours with egg beaters, a ‘buttery spread, lemon juice and white pepper.
The egg beaters has no sat fat and no cholesterol.
The buttery spread (Benecol) has 1g sat fat and no cholesterol.
Ratios:
Buttery spread to egg beaters is one to one.
Lemon juice to egg beaters is two tbsps to one cup.
Pinch of white pepper
Pinch of salt (if you need it)
Make only in a blender.
Blend everything except buttery spread at high speed in blender.
Heat buttery spread until really hot and boiling, stirring constantly, not allowing it to brown.
Pour the boiling spread into the blender slowly while the blender is running on high.
Add some fat free half and half and blend a little more for Mousseline Sauce.
You’ll be surprised how good it is when considering the little fat it contains.
When I put the egg yolks and they cooked and curdled. Not happy.
Likely your pan was too hot and you weren’t whisking vigorously enough. I believe you will encounter this issue with any hollandaise sauce recipe. I encourage you to try hollandaise sauce again in the future, whether it’s my recipe or another. It’s a challenging recipe, but delicious and worth the effort!
Great light hollandaise recipe – tastes as good as normal hollandaise and without the english muffin my eggs Benedict with this sauce was 400 calories / 30g fat/ 30g protein/ 9g carbs. Love it! Dont have to give up my favorite brunch item!
So easy to make and delicious! I just got a poached egg maker for the Instant Pot so was very excited to make eggs Benedict.
This was delicious. We just had eggs benedict with it and it was perfect.
My first time making this sauce and it was delicious! I made sure to cook over low heat so the yolks did not scramble. Thanks for sharing!
This was so easy to make and I could tell it will be good but the lemon juice and zest that it called for was too strong. And I double checked to make sure I added correctly. I will certainly make this again but will use half of the lemon that’s called for.