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Welcome to Del Monicos. I'm executive chef Adam Plit. Today we're here to make the perfect Eds Benedict. There's such a rich history here at Del Monacos. 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 Del Monaco's we use bio pasteur raised eggs and applewood smoked ham. We finished the eggs benedict with a lovely bernese. The most important part of this dish is the sauce. Let's get started. Traditionally, eggs benedict has Hollands. Your Hollands has your lemon juice and cayenne and clarified butter.
The Bernese is a rendition of Hollands. The difference is that it has diced shallots, crushed black pepperc corn, and teragon. 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 Del Monaco's, we like the Bernese cuz it just offers a little bit of contrast from the richness of the egg and the buttery bio 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 teragon here. The teragon offers a nice
floral note to the end of the dish. Really brings everything together. We're going to take the leaves off the teragon. Take the stem. Put it in our reduction. Reserve these leaves for later for our finished sauce. So, we're going to add our crushed black pepper. We don't want whole pepperc corn, so we're biting on a whole pepperc corn. They'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. 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. We don't want it to burn around the edges cuz that will affect the flavor of the wine. We're just going to boil it down. It's about 3/4 reserving a little liquid. This will cook the shallots, soften the black pepper, bring out the flavor of the teragon stem, and cook out all the alcohol in the wine as well. Eggs Benedict was founded by the chef of Del Monaco at the time, Charles Ranhoffer. Arguably the first celebrity chef here in New York City. Chef Charles
Ranhoffer wrote the Epicurion. And that was the first instance in which you would see eggs benedict. There was a guest by the name of Mrs. Lrand Benedict. She requested something special from the kitchen. So Chef Ranhoffer whipped up what we now know today as eggs benedict. So this has been simmering for about 5 minutes. As you can see, the wine and vinegar are 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 Bernese breaking. The reason why it breaks is either from temperature or not enough water contents for the emulsion to hold. Adding those milk solids will help hold that emulsion. The butter's at a good boil. Now we're ready to move over to the blender and put our sauce together. If you're making this dish at 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 makes the sauce super consistent, holds together for 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 outs. We want to reserve the liquid for the sauce itself. And we're going to leave those teragon 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 and a homogenized mixture. Now we're going to add the reduction to the sauce.
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. We don't want to finish it completely with salt. to 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 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.
Coach 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 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 Bernese special. You go to a lot of places and they just chop teragon and put it in Hollands and call it Bernese. This to me is what really sets
it off. See, we have that nice deep rich color from those pasture-raised eggs. We're going to add a little bit more salt. Cover this sauce. We put them in a warm place over the stove while we prep the rest of our dish. For eggs benedict here at Del Monaco, we use bio. 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 because 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 ruddy egg. A nice thick
cut is what I recommend. By using bio 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 Del Monaco, 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 breadrumbs, whatever you want. So, now that we have our bio rounds cut, we're going to set them aside and we're going to get our ham ready. So, this is 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 bio, 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° oven and get it nice and warm. Get a little crispiness on the outside. So, next we're going to brush the bio 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 bio and just get a nice golden color. And since we painted the bio with the butter, we don't have to worry about burning only a portion of the bread and not getting it toasted and toast it nice and evenly. Flip here. Nice golden color. And then we'll toast the other side. That's it. 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. It's rolling too hard. It
could possibly break the egg apart as it goes in. I'm gonna give it a little swirl with a whisk. That's going to create a little vortex. And but I 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 2 or 3 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 them 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. So, we're going to assemble our dish. We'll take our nice toasted bio. Take our ham or a 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 teragon. We're going to add that to our sauce. We kept the sauce warm this entire time. It's
beautiful, velvety, nice and rich. We'll finish with a little bit of sliced chive. And that's it. Eggs benedict. A simple dish. Elevated the del Monaco's way. The yolk is perfectly cooked. The bio is nice and soft underneath. Delicious. I get the acidity of the sauce, creaminess of the egg, the nice richness of the ham. This is a simple preparation of egg 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 them. Created right here at Del Monagos. 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.
