Best Vegan Hollandaise Sauce (No Nuts & No Eggs)

If you've ever tried to make a vegan hollandaise sauce and ended up with something thin, flat, or just deeply disappointing — you are not alone. We've been there more times than we'd like to admit. Most egg-free, dairy-free hollandaise recipes fall short in one of two ways: either the flavor is missing that rich, buttery, distinctly eggy quality that makes a real hollandaise so luxurious, or the texture is too thin and watery to coat anything properly. Neither is acceptable when you're trying to recreate one of the most iconic sauces in brunch history.

After a lot of testing, tweaking, and far too many mediocre hollandaise experiences, we finally cracked it. This recipe is the holy grail of vegan hollandaise sauces — rich, silky, deeply flavorful, and strikingly close to the traditional egg-based version in both texture and taste. And perhaps most impressively, it's completely free of most major allergens including eggs, dairy, nuts, and soy (depending on your plant milk choice), making it one of the most inclusive hollandaise recipes you'll find anywhere.

Simple Enough to Make in Under 10 Minutes

One of the things we love most about this recipe beyond how incredible it tastes is just how effortless it is to pull together. Because this hollandaise is completely nut-free, there's no soaking, no blending, and no high-powered equipment required. Everything comes together in a single saucepan on the stovetop in under 10 minutes from start to finish. It's the kind of recipe that feels impressive enough for a special occasion brunch but is genuinely simple enough to make on a regular weekday morning without any stress.

The Secret Ingredient — Our Plant-Based Egg Sauce

The reason this hollandaise succeeds where so many other vegan versions fall flat comes down to one key ingredient: a half batch of our oil-free plant-based egg sauce. This is the ingredient that transforms a good vegan sauce into something truly magical. It provides the silky, rich, deeply savory egg yolk quality that is the defining characteristic of a great hollandaise — both in texture and in flavor — giving this recipe an authenticity that is genuinely difficult to achieve in plant-based cooking. Without it, you have a buttery sauce. With it, you have a hollandaise.

The other star of this recipe is vegan butter — and we highly recommend using our homemade version here, which contains 35% less fat than store-bought vegan butter and honestly just tastes better. The butter is what gives the hollandaise its characteristic richness and body, so we don't recommend omitting it entirely if you can help it. That said, if you're following a lower-fat diet, you can reduce the butter to two tablespoons and increase the plant milk by two tablespoons to compensate, or omit the butter altogether and use plant milk in its place — just keep in mind that your hollandaise will be noticeably less rich without it.

One more ingredient worth highlighting — Kala Namak (black salt), which is what gives our plant-based egg sauce its signature sulfurous, eggy flavor. If you don't have it on hand you can absolutely omit it, but your hollandaise will taste slightly less egg-forward as a result. We always recommend having a bag in your pantry if you're serious about plant-based egg recipes — it's an inexpensive ingredient that makes an enormous difference.

The Nutrition Comparison — And It's Not Even Close

Let's talk about what's actually in this hollandaise versus a traditional egg-based version, because the difference is genuinely staggering and worth understanding before you pour it over everything on your plate.

A traditional hollandaise sauce is one of the richest, most indulgent sauces in classical cooking — and the nutrition numbers reflect that. A single serving of traditional hollandaise contains approximately 27 grams of fat and a remarkable 207 milligrams of cholesterol — which represents roughly 70% of your entire recommended daily cholesterol limit in a single sauce serving. That's before you've eaten anything else on your plate.

Our vegan hollandaise tells a very different story. Each serving contains just 8.2 grams of fat — a reduction of 18.8 grams per serving compared to the traditional version — and an absolutely cholesterol count of zero. You get all of the richness, all of the satisfaction, and all of the flavor of a classic hollandaise without any of the cholesterol burden that comes with the egg and butter-heavy original. For anyone monitoring their cholesterol levels, cooking for someone with an egg allergy, or simply trying to eat more consciously without sacrificing the foods they love, this recipe is a genuine revelation.

Beyond fat and cholesterol, this hollandaise is also meaningfully richer in B vitamins than its traditional counterpart, with comparable levels of most other key vitamins and minerals. You really can feel good about pouring this generously — for your health, for the planet, and for the chickens.

How to Store It

This hollandaise is at its absolute best served fresh — and given how quickly it comes together, we generally recommend making it the day you plan to use it. That said, if you have leftovers or want to make it slightly ahead, it keeps well in the refrigerator for up to five days. When reheating, simply add a small splash of plant milk to thin it back out to the right consistency as it will thicken in the fridge. We haven't personally tested freezing this sauce, but if you need to freeze it, thaw it slowly in the refrigerator before reheating rather than using the microwave for the best texture result.

How to Use It

The obvious answer is plant-based Eggs Benedict — and this hollandaise is absolutely stunning in that application. But don't stop there. Drizzle it generously over breakfast potatoes, spoon it over breakfast bowls, use it as a dip for roasted or steamed vegetables, pour it over asparagus for an elegant side dish, or serve it alongside vegan crab cakes for a restaurant-quality plate at home. Anywhere you'd reach for a classic hollandaise, this can step in — and we're confident it'll impress everyone at the table, vegan or not.