Alternative Beurre Blanc

[Surfer2]

In one of my cookbooks a recipe calls for a Beurre Blanc sauce, and it is all butter and cream Is it possible to substitute all of this butter for margerine? And is it possible to substitute all of the cream for low fat skim milk?

[youla]

No, I dont believe you can substitute either, the sauce will suffer misersbly,..I dont know about the margarine...but the butter acts as the thickner and I really cant see it with skim milk....sorry a beurre blanc is a butter sauce...made with a wine [or stock and wine reduction] and a cream reduction ...if you want to use skim milk perhaps you are better off starting off with a roux base.

[Pete]

Forget it. Besides the fact that it would taste awful, it really couldn't be done well. First of all the cream is reduced greatly, and skim milk will break before it reduces. Secondly I don't know how margarine will behave. I don't know if it will emulsify. Besides, with all the bad press that margarine has gotten I think you are better off with butter. Overall I think you should find a substitute sauce if you don't want to ingest all that fat. But remember, fat is not bad in moderation. Go ahead and make a traditional Beurre Blanc, just don't eat it everyday.

[m brown]

Evaporated Skim Milk is a great alternitive to cream in recipes. I am not saying it is the same as cream, but a darn good sub. As for the butter etc. again, this is for SPECIAL DIETS, Chicken Stock thicked with Starch can be used IN PLACE butter as it thickens and coats with a slightly similar mouth feel of fat. Look for a cook book specializing in low fat.

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Thank You,
mb

Margarine should work. The flavor isn't my cuppa tae, but the ratio of fat to liquid in margarine (I think) should allow it to behave like butter. You can skip the cream altogether. It's only real function is to add more H2O anywho. My advice, reduce white wine w/shallots and garlic until sec. remove from heat momentarily then SLOWLY whisk in margarine, and add desired herbs, salt and pepper over VERY low heat.The sauce should basically make itself. I don't know what to say about the flavor of margarine though

[Nicko]

After seeing this topic I was curious to try it. It doesn't work, margine breaks down and the sauce just doesn't taste right. My guess would be it is because of several reasons mainly the fat content does not provide a stable emulsion, and the way that margerine is re-hydrogenated so that it stays stable has a lot to do with it. It is actually very nasty. On this one I would have to go with what Pete has said, go with the original, just don't drink a gallon of the stuff.

I have to ask, honestly now, do any chefs have margering in the kitchen coolers? I can't for the life of me ever rember placing an order for margerine.

Forget the margerine idea, butter is actually much healthier for you than margerine.

Give it up people, that is lame!!! I mean common, margerine for a beurre blanc. What are you going to replace the wine with, grape juice?

Food is food, cooking cooking, accept it, and enjoy some good living.

[Pete]

There really are a lot of sauces out there that are much lower in fat. Look through some good cookbooks. Try Peterson's "Sauces" it is a great book with hundereds of different sauces. Many are not loaded with lots of fat. I am not a believer in trying to make foods low-fat. I do believe in low-fat foods though. Look for foods that are low-fat to begin with and create around them. A good example would be a soubise sauce. Take onions and sweat them until they are falling apart, using as little veg. oil as possible. While that is going on, reduce chicken stock, that has been carefully defatted. Reduce it over mire poix and herbs. When the onions are sweet and falling apart puree them and add chicken stock until you have a nice sauce consistency. Strain and season. This is not done exactly the classical way, but it is close without compromising the integrity of the dish. You can do with many other dishes also. It just takes some research.

And Jacky enough with the "lame" bit. I didn't see you come up with an alternative solution. Not everyone on here is a chef and you may find their questions stupid, if so ignore them or try to offer something intelligent to say. Like it or not, not everyone cooks in the fine dinning sector. Many chefs and cooks work in the corporate, or institutional sectors. Where they are either asked or required to come up with low-fat alternatives. Places such as hospitals, nursing homes, etc. where people are required to limit their fat intake for health reasons. Sometimes these bastardized versions of dishes work (may not taste great, but the work) some don't. In this case I don't see how it could work and obviously so do you. Great we are in agreement. Now give a viable alternative.

[chefjohnpaul]

Actually with beurre blanc what you are doing is converting butter back into a flavored cream, you are taking a water in fat emulsion(butter) and converting it back to a fat in water emulsion, like heavy cream.
You are just reconverting the butter back into cream. Both these dairy products contain the natural emulsifier, lecithin. I don't believe the make up of margerine will allow this conversion unless there is a margerine out there with the same components of butter. If there is then why not just use the natural product instead? (See Harold McGee's book "The Curious Cook" under the subject of beurre blanc.)Try a white wine sauce made with a bechemel. It definately won't be the same but may be an alternative to the fat, if this is for a gourmet occasion make the real beurre blanc and then use it sparingly, there is nor "real" substitute for it's rich/light body and silken mouth feel.

Happy Cooking!
John Paul Khoury,CCC

[This message has been edited by chefjohnpaul (edited July 02, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by chefjohnpaul (edited July 02, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by chefjohnpaul (edited July 02, 2000).]

[Surfer2]

Cool! Wow you guys (and gals) are the best. Just for a laugh I did try it and it was really really really really bad. What I did try was using half and half instead of straight cream and that worked fine. Hey at least I got some of the fat out of there.

Later all...