Good luck. Good eats!

I’m not really much of a superstitious person. Maybe it’s my philosophy background, but I tend to think that things happen randomly and we impose meaning on them.

That said, there are still a few traditions that I do without fail.

One of those is eating black-eyed peas on New Years. It’s something my mom always served to me and she still calls me every year to make sure that I eat some.

I figure that in this case it doesn’t really hurt. Black-eyed peas aren’t a strange food. They aren’t impossible to find or taste gross. They are cheap and delicious. So I figure why not?!

Normally, I just make some sort of hearty soup like this one, but this year I decided to class it up a bit. As it happens, black-eyed peas and bacon make for a really good eggs benedict.

As a reader recently said on my Facebook page: “I don’t believe in good luck. But I do believe in good food!”

Black Eyed Pea Benedicts

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + cooking beans

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
3-4 slices thick bacon, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 large leaf of kale, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pinch of salt
4 large eggs
1/2 cup white vinegar (for poaching)
2 english muffins
Sriracha sauce (opt.)

Hollandaise Sauce:
1 large egg yolk
1 cup butter, melted preferably clarified
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 pinch cayenne peppe (opt.)

Directions:

1) Cook black-eyed peas according to package. Canned would work fine for this recipe also.

2) Dice bacon and scallions. For kale, slice out the center rib from one large leaf and mince the kale finely.

3) In a skillet, add a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Cook bacon until it's well-browned and most of the fat has rendered out.

4) Add scallions and kale and continue to cook for another few minutes until they soften.

5) Stir in black-eyed peas and season mixture with salt and pepper. Keep on low heat until needed and stir occasionally.

6) For hollandaise, whisk yolk together with water, lemon, and a pinch of cayenne and salt.

7) Melt butter. Clarified butter will work best, but I've used just normal melted unsalted butter with success before.

8) Over a double boiler, heat yolk mixture and whisk until it's steaming and frothy.

9) Slowly start to drizzle in butter and whisk. Add the butter slowly until the sauce comes together. You may not need the entire cup of butter to get a smooth sauce. Once the sauce is formed, set it aside until needed. Don't keep it over the heat. If it gets too thick, whisk in a teaspoon of hot water to thin it out.

10) To poach eggs, add 1/2 cup of vinegar to a large pot of water (2 quarts). Bring the water to a simmer (not a boil) and swirl the water with a spoon.

11) Crack eggs into a bowl and then carefully drop them into the swirling water. Cook for about 2 minutes.

12) Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and let them drain briefly on a paper towel.

13) Toast muffins and spoon black-eyed pea mixture over muffins. Top with eggs and sauce. Optionally, drizzle on some sriracha or hot sauce. Serve immediately.

The Peas

I used dried black-eyed peas for this post, but there’s really no reason for it. Feel free to use canned.

If you do use dried, be sure to sort them before cooking them. Of all the dried legumes I’ve ever used, black-eyed peas have more pebbles than any other in my experience. No idea why this is, but I always find a pebble or two in my black-eyed peas.

Chipping a tooth on a rock is not a great way to start the new year!

You could use canned...

The Topping

Besides the black-eyed peas, there’s just a few things that I wanted to put in my filling. All of these are pretty standard flavors that go really well with black-eyed peas. Traditionally, a ham hock is used to cook them, but I just sliced up a few pieces of bacon.

Instead of collard greens which need need to cook for awhile, I just minced up a kale leaf which will saute much better.

Good flavors!

To start the filling, add a drizzle of oil to a skillet and add all your bacon over medium heat.

Cook it until most of the fat has rendered out and the bacon starts to crispy up, about 8 minutes. Then add the sliced scallions and kale.

Cook this mixture until the veggies start to soften, just another minute or two. This will already smell great.

Already delicious!

Then just toss in your cooked black-eyed peas and season with some salt and pepper.

Solid stuff

Keep this mixture warm over low heat until you need it later. Give it a stir occasionally just to make sure it isn’t burning.

The Hollandaise

I really do think that when it comes to classic sauces, hollandaise is the easiest to make. I find it to be a very forgiving sauce which is why I’m always baffled at how restaurants screw it up.

It’s really just two things: Eggs and butter.

Not a hard sauce.

If you are making a really professional hollandaise sauce, you want to make sure and clarify your butter before using it in the sauce. This basically just insures that you don’t get any butter solids in the sauce and that you have consistent results.

But you know what? Clarifying butter is kind of a pain in the buttocks. I’ve just melted butter in the microwave before and used it with okay (but not perfect) results. Just try not to add the butter solids (which will be at the bottom of your bowl) to the sauce if you can help it.

Also, if your sauce doesn’t work because you took this shortcut… don’t blame me!

To make the sauce, whisk together a yolk with a teaspoon of water and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. Add in a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper (optional).

Set this bowl over a pan of simmering water (double boiler) and continue to whisk it until the yolk mixture turns frothy. It should be steaming slightly and will start foaming like crazy. This is your cue to start adding the butter.

Just like any time you are making an emulsified sauce, start by drizzling in a small amount of the butter. Whisk whisk whisk. Drizzle in a bit more. Whisk more.

If your sauce starts to curdle at all, it might be getting to hot, so take it off the heat and whisk like crazy.

At the end of the day you should be able to whisk in almost an entire cup of melted butter into the yolk. This was my finished sauce and it was darn near perfect in my opinion!

I could eat this with a spoon.

Once your sauce is made, don’t put it back on the heat. It’ll break down completely if it gets too hot. It’ll be fine at room temperature for 5 minutes while you finish the rest of meal. If it comes time to use it and it’s really thick or congealed, just whisk in a teaspoon of hot water and it’ll loosen up immediately.

Poaching the Eggs

They make fancy contraptions to poach eggs, but I think those things tend to overcook the eggs. If you don’t feel like poaching the eggs, you can also just fry a few eggs over-easy and use those.

To poach eggs the right way though, just bring a large pot of water to a simmer and then add in a good amount of plain distilled vinegar.

Crack your eggs one at a time into a separate bowl. Give the water a swirl with a spoon and gently slide the egg into the water. It should immediately clench up and start cooking in a nice little package.

Depending on the size of your pot, you should be able to do 2-4 eggs at a time in one pot.

Two minutes of cooking time will leave you with perfect poached eggs.

When they are done, scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel.

You could fry them also...

Assembling the Benedicts

All the hard work is done. Now for the fun part.

Toast a few English muffins and pile on the black-eyed pea mixture.

High and deep!

Top each half with an egg and a good dollop of sauce.

You could stop right here if you wanted.

Pretty straightforward

I like a bit of hot sauce with my black-eyed peas though so I drizzled on some Sriracha. It totally made the dish in my opinion.

When you cut into one of these benedicts, it’s a thing of beauty.

Best brunch I've made in awhile.

Like I said, I’m not sure that I believe in good luck.

But I’ll use any reason I can find though for an excuse to make these delicious things.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

It's all about the hash!

I had a few friends in town from New York City a few weeks ago and they really only requested two things in the meal department:

1) A good Tex-Mex dish. (post coming soon)
2) A great brunch dish.

I don’t think I disappointed on either, but I thought the brunch dish was especially good. Granted, I’m biased because eggs benedict happens to be one of my favorite things ever.

I rarely order it at restaurants though because I become irrationally irate if it isn’t perfect. Luckily, when I make them at home, I can normally pull off a pretty solid version.

For this version, instead of switching up the middle layer between the egg and the bread, I switched up the bread by using a really crispy layer of hash browns!

It was a huge hit.

Hash Brown Benedicts

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

4 large russet potatoes, grated
1/4 Cup vegetable oil for cooking hash browns
8 large eggs
8 slices crispy bacon (or a filling of your choice: spinach, ham, crab, avocado, tomatoes, etc.)
1/2 Cup vinegar for poaching eggs
Salt and pepper

Hollandaise Sauce:
2 large egg yolks
3 Tablespoons water
1 Teaspoon vinegar
1 Teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 Teaspoon salt
10-12 ounces clarified butter (made from one pound butter)

Directions:

1) Lay out bacon on a wire rack over a sheet pan. Cook at 350 degrees in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the bacon is really crispy. Remove and turn the oven down to 250 degrees.

2) Grate potatoes and dunk them in ice cold water. Keeping them in water will keep them from discoloring.

3) When ready to cook potatoes, dry them off on a few paper towels. Add to a hot skillet or griddle over medium-high heat with a few Tablespoons of oil. Cook potatoes in batches and as they cook, shape them into 8 bundles. They will take probably 10-12 minutes to get really crispy.

4) Add cooked bundles of hash browns to a sheet pan and store in the warm oven until ready to use.

5) For sauce, mix yolk, water, lemon, salt, and vinegar in a large bowl. Place bowl over simmering water bath. Be sure bowl doesn't touch water.

6) Whisk until egg mixture is frothy and hot. It should at least double in volume and be slightly steaming.

7) Slowly whisk in clarified butter until it forms a smooth sauce. If the sauce gets to thick, add a bit more water and whisk.

8) Poach eggs in water with added vinegar. Cook them for 90-120 seconds.

9) Plate hash browns topped with bacon while eggs cook. Then immediately top with eggs and sauce and serve right away!

Prepping the Base

The thing that can really go wrong with hash browns is discoloration. Potatoes will oxidize really quickly when they are grated and turn this horrible dark purple brown color that is in no way appetizing.

The only way I know of to prevent this is to dunk the hash browns in cold water as soon as you grate them. This will keep them looking nice and fresh.

Shredded and soaking.

When you’re ready to cook the hash browns, pull out a few handfuls from the water and press them on some paper towels to dry them out. Then add them to a large skillet with a good amount of oil over medium-high heat. They’ll hiss and complain for a bit, but that’s good.

While the hash browns cook, use a spatula to kind of portion them out into small segments. Ideally, you are looking for eight hash brown chunks if you are serving four people. The hash browns will probably take 10 minutes total to get nice and crispy.

Once they are done, you can put them all on a sheet pan and keep them in a warm (250 degree) oven until you’re ready to use them.

Nice and crispy.

The Sauce

In my opinion, there are three tricky parts to making a good benedict: timing, eggs, and sauce. We’ll get to the first two in a second, but let’s handle the sauce first since I think that’s the trickiest of the three.

Hollandaise sauce is a lot like homemade mayo, except instead of oil, we’ll use clarified butter. It’s also a warm sauce which makes it a bit easier to mix actually, but you run the risk of over-cooking the eggs which isn’t good.

There are lots of ways to make this sauce and I’m sure there’s an official cooking school way that I don’t know. What I do know is that my way works… so whatever.

Start with two egg yolks in a bowl. To this bowl add all your other ingredients except the butter.

sauce basics.

Whisk everything together and then put the bowl over a pan with simmering water. You want to be sure that the bottom of the bowl isn’t touching the water. You just want it to steam.

Whisk the bowl pretty continuously as the yolk mixture starts to heat up. It’ll be a bit runny at this point, but that’s fine. Keep whisking for about 3 minutes and eventually your mixture will at least double in size and turn really frothy. This should also be hot to the touch at this point and very lightly steaming.

Steamy and frothy is good.

One common mistake that I’ve seen people make when they try to make hollandaise is just to melt butter and whisk it in. This might work, but you won’t get a great sauce with it because butter is about 20% solids which is going to mess up your sauce.

So, even though it’s kind of a pain, if you want to make a really good sauce, you need to clarify your butter before mixing it in with the sauce. I did an entire post on how to clarify butter a year or so ago, so just check that out.

My clarified butter was far from perfect for this version, but it’s still way better than just melted butter. I got about 12 ounces of clarified butter out of 1 pound of butter and I used it all for this sauce.

Not perfect, but it'll work.

Once your egg mixture is frothy and hot, start slowly whisking in the clarified butter. Start slowly and whisk furiously!

As your butter incorporates, the sauce should get really nice and thick.

It’ll be a delicious thing.

Pretty solid if I do say so myself.

You wouldn’t want to make hollandaise sauce way before you serve the meal, but it will keep fine for 15-20 minutes. If it cools down, just put it back over the heat and add a few drops of water. It should loosen up and return to a nice hot sauce without a problem.

The Timing

More than any one ingredient, the timing of eggs benedict can throw some people off. This is the general schedule I used for these:

1) Make bacon in oven
2) Cook hash browns (and hold in hot oven)
3) Put large pot of water on to boil for eggs later
4) Make Hollandaise sauce
5) Poach eggs
6) While eggs poach, lay out each plate and make sure your sauce is hot.
7) Plate and serve right away!

Baked is the only way to go.

Doing this schedule means that the things that are most time sensitive (the eggs and the sauce) are the very last to be prepared.

If you wait more than about five minutes between when the eggs are done and you eat the darn thing, the eggs will be cold and the sauce won’t be great. This is why it’s a hard dish to pull of in a restaurant.

Stack it up!

The Eggs

I haven’t talked about poaching eggs yet and that’s because I find them to be pretty easy to do honestly. Using this method, I can poach four eggs at a time and have about a 95% success rate with the eggs. (You’re bound to lose one occasionally though so have extras ready.)

Get a large pot of water simmering and add about 1/2 cup of plain white vinegar to the water. The acid in the vinegar will make the eggs stick together really nicely.

Give the water a stir with a slotted spoon to create a small whirlpool. Crack the egg in a bowl. Don’t crack it straight into the water. Gently pour the egg into the simmering water from the bowl. Do as many as you feel comfortable with. I used to do two at a time, but these days I can handle four. How many also depends on your pot size.

Set a timer for 90 seconds. Once 90 seconds is up, start checking the eggs. Use a slotted spoon to carefully scoop one out and gently poke it. It should feel firm in the white sections and liquid in the yolk. As the eggs finish, move them to a plate with a paper towel to drain slightly.

Top each hash brown and bacon stack with one egg and a good drizzle of sauce.

Egged and sauced!

To be honest, I’m not sure I would recommend the hash brown method if this is your first benedict ever. Stick with the english muffin just because it removes an element of cooking.

But if you’re feeling ambitious or an eggs benedict expert, this was a freakin’ awesome variation. The potatoes do a great job of sopping up all that delicious sauce and egg mixture. Obviously, if the bacon is too heavy for you, you could use something lighter like tomatoes, spinach, or even crab cakes!

I really really love these.

We’ll get to the benedicts later. First, let’s talk about the drink because your guests will be thirsty while they wait for you to make the meal.

A few years ago, I used to moonlight as a bartender and my favorite shift I would work was Sunday brunch. In general, people are always in a good mood for brunch and the restaurant I happened to work at had a bottomless mimosa/bloody mary deal that was huge hit. After working that shift for about a year, I got pretty darn good at making various versions of bloody marys.

Turns out the recipe for a stellar bloody mary can vary greatly. My very few rules are:

- Don’t use a mix dude. Use real tomato juice. Most mixes suck.
- I think heat is important. Make it spicier than you would think because it will get diluted.
- Make sure your acids balance. This usually means adding something like lemon juice.
- Don’t overdo it on the extras. Sometimes I’ve had bloody marys that have so much stuff in them they just taste like CRAZYTOWN.

What you need for a bloody.

Here is the recipe I used for this round of Bloodys.

A Bloody Mary Recipe (makes 4-6 drinks)

- 32 ounces tomato juice
- 2 Tablespoons horseradish
- 2 Tablespoons hot sauce, adjust accordingly
- 1 Tablespoon celery salt
- 1 lemon, juice only
- Salt and pepper to taste

Now that is just a base, but basically, just mix all of that together and feel free to add more of any of the ingredients depending on your taste. Some other things you might consider adding (although I wouldn’t recommend adding them all at once): Old Bay seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, or clam juice just to name a few.

Action shot!

I usually use Tabasco for my bloody marys, but I was out this time so I tried Frank’s Red Hot. The problem is that Frank’s just doesn’t quite have the heat I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I love Frank’s, but I need some more spice.

I added a few shots of this to the mix to spice it up a bit more.

BAM.

You can make this mix even a week before you are ready to use it. Just make sure you relabel the bottle so people don’t think they are getting tomato juice. There is no vodka in this yet, just the mix.

The mix.

For the end drink, I use about a shot and a half to two shots of vodka per 6 ounces of mix. But use your own judgment depending on what kind of a Sunday you want to have. Need a good garnish? Try: olives, celery, cucumber, oyster… anything else?

Good way to start the day!

Ok. Let’s talk about the eating part of this brunch. So there are four basic parts to a good egg Benedict and we will handle them in turn.

The English Muffin. I always toast my English muffin for a Benedict. For this round I also made them, but buying them is perfectly fine. It is definitely not essential to make them.

The Filling. Normally, the thing between the muffin and the egg is a thick slice of ham. I definitely like that, but there are tons of other things you can use. For these versions, I used bacon and sauteed spinach. The key thing about the filling is that you don’t need too much of it. You don’t want it to overflow.

For the spinach, I sauteed it in a tablespoon of oil for a few minutes until it wilted and turned bright green. Then remove it from the heat right away.

This part is easy.

The hollandaise. Eggs Benedict is simply not good without a good hollandaise sauce. That’s just my personal opinion. And frankly, I think that a lot of restaurants don’t make the best hollandaise sauce and with reason. It is hard to keep it good for hours. It’s best within 30 minutes or so of making it.

So let’s make it. These are the things we will need.

The start of something beautiful.

The standard recipe I used I got from Ratio, although I simplified it a little bit.

Basic Hollandaise (Makes enough for 5 plates of benedicts.)

- 1 Tablespoon cider vinegar (I added this because of the Ratio recipe and it was good, but I’ve made it without this also.)
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 1/2 sticks butter, melted
- Pinch of salt
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- Pinch of Cayenne (optional)

Start by making a basic double boiler. Fill a medium sized pan with water and get it boiling and then place a metal bowl over the pan. If you don’t have a double boiler setup you can make this directly on the stovetop, but just make sure you keep the heat on low and watch it very carefully. It is very difficult to do without a double boiler though.

Add your cider vinegar, salt, and egg yolks to the top pan of your double boiler and whisk together. Keep whisking! After a few minutes it will start to steam a bit and foam up. Once the yolk mixture triples in volume (it will do that very quickly), start drizzling in your melted butter, whisking the entire time.

The butter should emulsify with the yolks perfectly. If the mixture starts separating, take it off the heat and whisk continuously. If it starts to coagulate, add a few drops of water. I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make though. At the very end, add your lemon juice and cayenne and whisk until it is silky and thick.

If you aren’t using it immediately, turn off the heat and you can keep the sauce on the double boiler for 30 minutes or so without a problem. Whisk it every 10 minutes or so just to make sure it stays together.

The eggs. I’m also a purist when it comes to eggs on a Benedict. I’ve seen fried eggs and scrambled eggs, but a runny poached egg is the only way for me. I’ve talked about how to make poached eggs before, so check out this post if you need some help on how to make them. HINT: You don’t need one of those fancy poaching dishes. All you need is a pot, some water, and some vinegar.

Then all you have to do is slap it all together!

The bacon version.

I guess this is kind of an advanced meal, but if you take it one thing at a time, it is very doable. And very delicious. I love make a few different fillings and giving people options.

Mid brunch action shot.

Obviously, this isn’t the healthiest brunch ever, but if made correctly, I think it is worth every calorie.

This was my second helping.

So, make the bloody mary’s from scratch. It is very doable. Once you have some liquid courage, give the benedicts a shot. Honestly, even if you don’t get it perfect, it will still be better than most that you find in a restaurant these days.