The Bain-Marie

[ellyssian]

I'm breaking this out from the recipe for Béarnaise sauce and posting it independently, just because.

I needed a bain-marie to make the sauce, and I didn't have one. So, whilst on our last minute ingredients gathering, aequitaslevitas and Mr. B scoured (pun quite intended, thankyouverymuch) our local fine shopping establishments ~ and even Evil*Mart ~ for this rare and, for hot egg sauces and melted chocolates and alchemy oh my, critical tool.

Wait! Stop the presses! What exactly is a bain-marie, you ask? Why, no, it is not, strictly speaking and despite what so many kitchen tool sites that should know better seem to state, a common double boiler ~ and even that thing, however common, isn't to be found in these here parts, at least not in a decent size for a decent price. No, it is a rarer creature, even more unavailable than the common double boiler.

It is, I suppose rather begrudgingly, a distant cousin, but, whereas a double boiler works by action of steam heating the upper pan, a bain-marie works by immersing one pan in the water. I expect that if our double boiler hadn't died a sad and pitiful death some years ago, I would have slummed with the rest of the chefs who confuse the two items, but, alas, without one or the other I was out of luck.

Since this area is without a chefs supply store of any stripe ~ there was a kitchen supply shop in scenic, historic Weissport, but it never seemed to be open and now seems to be gone ~ I had to go to the hardware store. As they say, if Marzen's Feed & Hardware doesn't have it, you don't need it.

Now, they didn't have double boilers or bain-maries there, because that would be silly, but what they did have was a u-bolt and some wing nuts.

I made the bain-marie from a WearEver Cook & Strain 1-1/2-Quart Covered Sauce Pan (although the Premium flavor, much heavier and nicer than the standard line) and a WearEver 10" Cook & Strain Premium pan (I'd provide a link, but the only one I found has a non-stick coating and I like non-stick pans about as much as I like drinking molten metal, except that at least the molten metal is natural and not full of all kinds of crap you're generally trying to avoid by making your own foods from less processed ingredients).

To turn the two pans into a bain-marie, you just need something to clasp the two handles and hold them together. I used the u-bolt with wing nuts so I can easily loosen and separate the two when the saucepan needs to come out of its hot water bath. I used a silicone potholder/pot rest pad as a liner mostly because the u-bolt was a bit big and couldn't tighten up on the handles ~ a smaller size would work better, but there's the advantage of covering the all-steel handles. You need a pot holder to move these when hot (which is fine, and to be expected, despite a few reviewers whining about things like that) and getting a pot holder tangled with the u-bolt could create a dangerous situation, so it's probably safer to have it set up in this configuration anywho.

Enough with the text, here's a shot of it at rest and in action:





and one last time, within seconds of the sauce finishing and the asparagus beginning its journey to the table:

Comments

Two pans

[sikander7.livejournal.com]

I must admit I just simply put a small pan inside the large one and I don't worry about the handles or the angle. It seems to work.

Re: Two pans

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure I wanted to have the bottom of the saucepan in direct contact with the outer pan, so I wanted to suspend it a bit, so it was immersed but not making contact.

I could find no specifics as to the ramifications of it, but felt since most people worried so much about Béarnaise sauce and it's fragility and the difficulty of making it, I'd take whatever precautions I could.

Did you cook hot egg sauces or something else?

[cissa.livejournal.com]

My double boiler can also work as a bain-marie if I put more water in the bottom. As can various rigged combos of steel bowls and pans.

That being said- I've always done hollandaise etc. in a double-boiler.

I admire your ingenuity, though! and no one can quibble with the results!

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I think it was all the warnings about how difficult it was to make the sauces, and how easily they were destroyed by too much this and not enough that... it kind of kept me on the straight and narrow, to try to keep things right.

If I still had that double boiler, though, I just would have used it! I do like being able to see and thus control the water temperature and quantity that this method provides.