blue cheese sauce

[Gabriel Lewis]

I have a pretty simple blue cheese sauce I've developed for some mini burgers that keeps breaking under prolonged heating during the service. It's basically just shallots sweated in butter, then mix in your cheese & cream and stir over low heat until dissolved nicely. It always breaks upon reheating though, and i have to reform the emulsion with cream a la minute. Is there some way I can prevent this? Any suggestions for a good blue cheese sauce are also appreciated

[TheSwede]

A bit of starch (arrow root/corn starch slurry) can probably keep it from breaking. But you need to boil it briefly to "develop" the starch.

Or you could use a "high tech" solution like a little bit of Xantan gum. No need for boiling then.

The third way is to keep it on low heat until you need it, but that might have health aspects if you do it for a long time.

Personally, I would use the Xantan. Introducing starch deadens the flavours a bit, but Xantan is (reputedly - no side by side tests done by me) much better.

[Jakea222]

The cream breaks - I know been there and tried many things. I tried a light roux and it also broke I tried the cornstarch thing - simalar to arrow root and it still breaks on reheat or sitting warm. I tried using cheap white cheese (out of a bucket that is liquid even when cold) I added bleu cheese to it - but it was weak in taste -- Very good question I hope someone can help you and me out

[tim]

Hi,

It's kind of like reheating hollandaise or any unstable emulsion. You should try constantly stirring while you reheat the sauce.

You can hold this sauce in a themos bottle.

Tim

Edited August 30, 2008 by tim (log)

[Gabriel Lewis]

Thanks for the suggestions, I think I'll try a few of them. I'm a little hesitant to try the xantham gum just yet. Obviously I'd prefer to make this kind of sauce a la minute or to slowly reheat while stirring on the stove, but with the setup i have right now that is just too much work. Demand varies a lot and the amount of sauce i need for an order is very small, say 10-15mL. Maybe I'll reheat it in a mixing bowl using a pot of water or something along those lines.

Edited August 30, 2008 by Gabriel Lewis (log)