Perfect Hollandaise Sauce

Easy and tasty source of choline to support the circadian folate and one carbon cell cycles responsible for healthy DNA methylation in the womb and across the lifespan

Egg yolks, salmon, and Brussels sprouts all contain choline—an essential nutrient at all stages of life, from time in the womb all the way into the final stages of old age and dementia.

Hollandaise sauce ingredients:

1/2 cup ghee or unsalted butter (melted)

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

pinch of salt

pinch of cayenne (optional)

How to get high quality ingredients?

If you live in the continental USA, I highly recommend Oregon’s Azure Standard for monthly (in some locations bi-weekly) bulk food deliveries. It feels old-fashioned and nice to pick up food in bulk, and is a great way to connect with likeminded people in your community. Check current prices for bulk grass-fed butter (15 lbs), pasture-raised GMO-free eggs (15 dozen), organic lemons (2 lb), cayenne (1 lb) and salt (25 lb).

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Instructions for making perfect hollandaise sauce

Use a little 2 cup pan or double boiler to melt the butter.

While the butter is melting, mix the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne in a little cream pitcher.

Once the butter is melted, slowly the egg mixture in.

It’s ready!

Note: the sauce will be a bit thin, and thickens as it cools. If it gets too thick, put it next to a warm burner or use a double-boiler to reheat it until it is thin enough to pour smoothly again. Don’t overheat the sauce or it will curdle. This will not only make it look less appealing but also make the nutrients less bioavailable.

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What to put hollandaise sauce on

Simple meals I add hollandaise sauce to include steamed veggies, soft boiled eggs, or poached fish.

When I have more time to cook, I also like the sauce for:

• fish cakes topped with wilted greens and poached eggs

• hash-browns topped with baked fish, garnished with fresh herbs &finely sliced onions

• steak and asparagus, Brussels sprouts, or other green veggie (or a medley!)

I love the hollandaise recipe because it uses fresh eggs and lemon, giving it both a nutrition and enzyme boost. When I eat it, I feel really good. This recipe seems to agree with my digestive system even though it is really rich.

Despite it now being one of my favorite foods, my first experience with hollandaise sauce was terrible! I was raised vegetarian, and we were traveling as a family to see our grandparents. We had been driving all day and arrived late to the hotel, so my dad went to the nearest late-nite diner for dinner. The best vegetarian thing on the menu was eggs benedict. The meals all arrived cold & soggy in flimsy to-go boxes. I remember nearly crying when I came to terms with this being the only thing I would be getting. Aside from being vegetarian, I wasn’t super picky kid except I did not like my egg yolks leaky! The knowledge hollandaise sauce used raw eggs was just about the worst thing in the world to me at that time (next to meat of course). And these eggs benedict not only had hollandaise sauce and leaky eggs, but something in it had clearly been cooked next to some ham or bacon because I could smell the smoky, meaty flavor underneath. It all mixed with the strange hotel smell and the glue-ey smell of the to-go container, and since I was still feeling queasy from having been in the car for many hours, it was to this very day, one of the worst meals of my life! Hahaha. It’s a funny memory now, especially as not only am I no longer vegetarian, but hollandaise sauce is now one of my very favorite foods and something my kids eat on a regular basis (they weren’t sure at first, but now, they all get excited about the golden sauce when it comes out).

Why eat hollandaise sauce? / Is hollandaise sauce healthy?

Eggs are the best food source of choline, a nutrient whose “role in human health begins prenatally and extends into adulthood and old age¹.”

One of my big interests in choline is that it can serve as an alternate source of methyl groups in the one carbon cycle—one of 6 major cellular cycles that depend on folate, which we all know is an essential nutrient for healthy pregnancy².

For those that are new to the concept that folic acid and folate depend upon the circadian rhythm, grab a quick introduction to circadian methylation in Part 1 of my Folate series:

Methylation—and getting it right, neither under-methylated or over-methylated—is hugely important in a family’s long-term genetic health.

Methylation patterns should change in response to Winter/Summer metabolic health³, and the daily circadian rhythm is what yokes us to our monthly and seasonal cycles. Ideally, we’d see higher methylation in the winter, and a counter-balancing demethylation in the summer. However, since many people don’t provide themselves the full experiences of either cold, dark, low-carbohydrate winter or bright, hot, feasted summers, they tend to get stuck in one or the other poles of the possible methylation patterns.

As a pregnant and breastfeeding mother, I focus on not only getting key nutrients and antioxidants in forms the body can easily assimilate⁴, but also on helping support myself and my family in fully embracing the seasonality where we live.

The importance of managing oxidative stress, these cellular cycles, and epigenetic expression with appropriate nutrition and environmental signaling also keeps me working hard to help families and maternity care providers to understand this research and how to apply it to everyday life.

We must as a society get a grip on the rampant forces like artificial-light⁵ and non-native electromagnetic radiation⁶ that are contributing to the unhealthy genetic alterations in we are seeing in children and babies⁷. We must also as individuals re-teach ourselves how to cook with real food so our bodies can make the most of the environmental signals we receive. The future of humanity depends on us all learning to re-incorporate some of the old ways like cooking from scratch and spending more time outside so we can continue enjoying technological conveniences and miracles without suffering modern long-term chronic health conditions (or inadvertently passing these conditions on to future generations).

January 2025 updates from Nikko:

• As part of my work as director of Research & Membership I am co-hosting a new quantum health focused community on Mighty Networks and you are invited to join for free: QBC Free. It’s also the very last chance to join the Winter Cohort 2025 of the Applied Quantum Biology Certification. Reply if you’d like info for how to jump in to the new term without having to go through the waitlist.

• Brighter Days, Darker Nights community member Maible is hosting an online motherhood circle that begins on Feb. 3, 2025. Learn more here (paid experience, with payment plans available for the 8 week arc): Nurtured Grove MotherCircle

• Brighter Days, Darker Nights community member Kristen just launched her own Substack! Learn more and sign up here: MamaBaby Rising

• Quantum Health in the Third Trimester of Pregnancy, the 12th lesson in my Circadian and Quantum Childbearing Year learning program is set to be released on Saturday, January 11, 2025

1. Wallace, T. C., Blusztajn, J. K., Caudill, M. A., Klatt, K. C., Natker, E., Zeisel, S. H., & Zelman, K. M. (2018). Choline: The Underconsumed and Underappreciated Essential Nutrient. Nutrition today, 53(6), 240–253. https://doi.org/10.1097/NT.0000000000000302

2. Steane, S. E., Cuffe, J. S. M., & Moritz, K. M. (2023). The role of maternal choline, folate and one‐carbon metabolism in mediating the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on placental and fetal development. The Journal of Physiology, 601(6), 1061–1075. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP283556

3. Naviaux, R. K. (2014). Metabolic features of the cell danger response. Mitochondrion, 16, 7–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2013.08.006

4. Thomas, M. S., DiBella, M., Blesso, C. N., Malysheva, O., Caudill, M., Sholola, M., Cooperstone, J. L., & Fernandez, M. L. (2022). Comparison between Egg Intake versus Choline Supplementation on Gut Microbiota and Plasma Carotenoids in Subjects with Metabolic Syndrome. Nutrients, 14(6), 1179. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14061179

5. Hsu, C.-N., & Tain, Y.-L. (2020). Light and Circadian Signaling Pathway in Pregnancy: Programming of Adult Health and Disease. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(6), 2232. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21062232

6. Matarèse, B. F. E., Rusin, A., Seymour, C., & Mothersill, C. (2023). Quantum Biology and the Potential Role of Entanglement and Tunneling in Non-Targeted Effects of Ionizing Radiation: A Review and Proposed Model. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 24(22), 16464. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms242216464

7. Kashani, Z. A., Pakzad, R., Fakari, F. R., Haghparast, M. S., Abdi, F., Kiani, Z., Talebi, A., & Haghgoo, S. M. (2023). Electromagnetic fields exposure on fetal and childhood abnormalities: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Open Medicine, 18(1), 20230697. https://doi.org/10.1515/med-2023-0697