In an effort to be healthy, each week, I try to make sure we have at least one portion of fish for dinner, however fish by itself can often be rather bland and I always like to have some sort of sauce or topping for the fish to give it a little bit of flavour.

Up to about a year ago, I had never tried Hollandaise sauce, until my mother in law made it to go with some fresh salmon, and I couldn't quite believe how delicious it was and how, for so many years, I had never tried it. Previously I had often bought white sauce, cheese sauce or even parsley sauce as a compliment to fish, as I also hate eating a dry dinner.

Hollandaise is however meant to be a rather tricky thing to make, due to the yolks changing consistency when heated, so knowing that, there was no way that I would have attempted to make it myself. Thankfully Hollandaise sauce packets are readily available in the supermarket, and in fact there are a couple of brands who product their own packet sauce of Hollandaise, including this one by Colman's, costing just under 30p for a 21g pack.

Real Hollandaise sauce is a mix of egg yolks, butter and lemon juice, however with this packet, all that it required of you is some butter and milk. Although I have only used Hollandaise sauce for fish, I know some people like to drizzle it over vegetables, such as asparagus, and I also tend to put it over the potatotes that I cook that accompany the fish, and it all tastes yummy.

This packet of Hollandaise sauce claims to contain no artificial colours, no added msg and no artificial preservatives. There is no doubt that making your own would be healthier I'm sure, as according to the nutritional information on the front of this packet, a 85ml serving contains 100 calories, 4.6g of sugar, 6.6g of fat, of which 3.7g are saturates and 0.6g of salt.

As I mentioned, like a lot of packet sauces, this is pretty easy to make, by simply melting some butter, empting the packet contents and then stirring in the milk, then bringing it to the boil whilst stirring all the time. The problem however that I generally encounter however, is that although I try to keep stirring continuously, I often have other food cooking at the same time and need to check on them as well, and so even taking my hand off stirring for a minute or two, seems to stop the sauce from being as free from lumps as I would like. I tend to find this happens more often with packets of Hollandaise sauce than the likes of parsley sauce, but it may be due to the contents of the packet. It isn't the end of the world however, and I usually just get a sieve out to get rid of any little lumps in the sauce, and so end up with a smooth sauce over my fish.

The sauce really is delicious, particularly over salmon, and there is a real buttery taste to it that tastes great over the other vegetables you are likely to have on the plate as well. For 29p, I don't know who would be bothered to make their own complicated Hollandaise sauce, and this is a great storecupboard essential, however it is a good idea to have someone else on hand to kep stirring whilst you look after the other food that is cooking if you want a lump free sauce.