Nutty Beurre Blanc Hack

If you’ve read my post on beurre blanc, you’d know that this classic sauce has a lot of room for customization and modernization. There are countless ways to develop your own flavor profile and bring a dish like a fish fillet to the next level.

You’d also know that beurre blanc can be an incredibly finicky sauce. You can’t heat it higher than 120f. Worse, you can’t really reheat it either! All that effort (and butter) and you can only use it for one meal.

Over the course of my beurre blanc testing, I developed a recipe that tastes deliciously savory, vegetal and intense – all while addressing the above problems with beurre blanc. It uses a technique I’ve never seen before, and it doesn’t rely on cream or stabilizers like xanthan gum to make it happen.

And the best part? It’s addictive (as graciously demonstrated by my friend here, who asked for a separate bowl of beurre blanc after I served it to him as part of a main course).

How does it work? Well, it’s basically a nut milk that’s made with melted butter instead of water. It’s thicker than your average beurre blanc, so it is split with an herb oil. You could use countless nut and herb oil combinations, but I prefer to use pistachio and basil oil. Pistachio and basil is one of my favorite flavor combinations, and its made all the better with butter.

PISTACHIO BEURRE BLANC RECIPE

This is a recipe for pistachio beurre blanc and basil oil served with cod and zucchini. Unlike other beurre blanc recipes, you can heat this beurre blanc to 200f. You even can store leftovers in the refrigerator and use it again just by reheating it.

Further, since this beurre blanc can be heated to such a high temp, you can be meticulous with your plating without resulting in the dish getting cold.

Here, I covered cod with zucchini and brushed it with basil oil. At the table, I poured the piping hot beurre blanc over the dish pictured. With a typical beurre blanc, intricate plating like this would result in the whole dish becoming room temp – not good.

My favorite part, however, is the taste. Let’s get to it.

INGREDIENTS

Beurre blanc:

• 1/2 cup pistachios

• 24 tablespoons (three sticks) of butter

• 1 pound of clams (or fish scraps and bones from the cod)

• Dry white wine

• 1 shallot

• 2 cloves garlic

• 1 lemon

Since I love the combo of pistachio and basil so much (and I like to make pistachio milk!), I go through a lot of raw, unsalted pistachios. I have a subscription to these because they are consistently fresh and way cheaper than you can get elsewhere.

Buy some to help me pay for this blog!

Basil oil:

• 1 bunch of basil leaves

• Neutral oil (e.g. canola oil)

Recommended accompaniments:

• Cod

• Small zucchini

PROCEDURE

Make the beurre blanc:

1. Create a clam stock (or fish scrap stock) by simmering clams with equal weight water. Strain the clams. You can make this a couple days in advance.

2. Melt the butter completely (e.g. in the microwave or in a sauce pan). The butter should be fully melted, but make sure it doesn’t boil or brown. You don’t want to mess with the butter solids.

3. Transfer the butter to a blender. Ensure that you transfer any and all butter solids, too. Those are essential for helping with the emulsion later on.

4. Add pistachios, then turn the blender on high. Run the blender until the melted butter has blended completely with the pistachios with no chunks, about 2 minutes.

5. Transfer the nutty butter into a container in the fridge and allow it to completely solidify again. You can do this a couple days in advance.

6. Add about 100g of white wine, 200g of clam juice, 1 chopped shallot, and 2 chopped garlic to a sauce pan. Reduce until nearly nothing is left, then strain. Press down on the shallots to gather that extra juice!

7. Return the liquid to the sauce pan and turn the temperature to very low. Gradually add small cubes of the cold nutty butter. Whisk the nutty butter around until it emulsifies with the liquid, then add more nutty butter. Continue adding nutty butter until you’re satisfied with the consistency.

8. Squeeze lemon juice to adjust the acidity. I always adjust for acidity before I adjust for salt because high acidity can require less salt.

9. Add salt to taste.

Make the basil oil:

1. Blanch the basil. Transfer it into ice water to stop the basil from cooking, then strain and dry with a paper towel. Cut the dried basil up with scissors to make the next steps easier.

2. Weigh the dried basil. Add oil weighing 2x the weight of the basil to a blender.

3. Add 1/4 of the dried basil to the oil and blend for two minutes. Add 1/4 more basil and blend for two minutes. Add the rest of the basil and blend for two final minutes. This method allows you to create herb oils in small quantities. If you add all the basil at once, it doesn’t blend up very well.

4. Let the basil oil sit in the blender in the fridge for a few hours. This will deepen the green color.

5. Strain.

Make the cod:

1. Cut the cod to the portions you want. It will be too flaky to cut after cooking.

2. Salt the cod and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes.

3. Cook the cod sous vide at 131f for 40 minutes or for up to 90 minutes until serving.

If you’re new to sous vide, apologies! I use a ChefSteps Joule to cook skin-less fish filets like cod because it allows for perfect temperature control. There’s no better way to ruin this dish than to serve the cod overcooked. Sous vide also lets you keep the fish at temp for a long period of time, helping you focus on that sauce emulsion.

Buy this to help me pay for this blog!

Prep the zucchini:

The simple version:

1. Slice the zucchini into small coins about the size of quarters.

2. Blanch the zucchini in salted water.

The complex version:

1. Do the simple version, but put the zucchini in ice water after blanching. You can do this in advance.

2. Warm the zucchini in beurre monte (which is basically beurre blanc made with just a dash of water instead of a flavored base liquid) until serving.

Serve!

The simple version:

1. Just before serving, split the beurre blanc with a spoonful of the basil oil. Don’t mix it too much! You want there to be a distinct separation between the beurre blanc and the oil.

2. Plate the zucchini and then put the cod on top

3. Pour the beurre blanc and basil oil over the cod and zucchini at the table for each guest.

The complex version:

1. Toss the zucchini in basil oil.

2. Plate the cod and then cover it intricately with the zucchini. Add a bit more basil oil so that it pools when you add the beurre blanc.

3. Pour the beurre blanc over the cod and zucchini at the table for each guest.

MIX IT UP

This blended nut beurre blanc technique works for other nuts too, but for whatever reason, some nuts have lower temperatures where the sauce breaks.

I’ve tried this with:

• Roasted hazelnuts and porcini oil (pictured)

• Walnuts and cilantro oil (sub lime for the lemon)

• Pumpkin seed and olive oil