How to make Béchamel Sauce

A rich white sauce made with milk infused with herbs and other flavorings, is called Béchamel sauce. This French sauce is made from simple and common ingredients like butter, milk, flour, salt & few spices & that’s it.  Such a basic recipe for, that you can use for variety of different dishes. An easy recipe with fresh & tasty ingredients, which doesn’t take too much time.  The sauce goes perfectly well with pastas, macaroni and grilled vegetables.

There are few rules to keep in mind to make perfect sauce. Rule number 1 to avoid mishaps in the kitchen is use equal parts of butter and flour to make the Roux. The second rule is that the roux needs to be cooked for a few minutes, otherwise the sauce will give the uncooked flavor. As you all know ‘slow and steady wins the race’, exactly this is the third & most important rule. Keep the heat low and slowly make the sauce. The fourth rule of Béchamel is constant stirring. The more you stir, more you get the fine & smooth sauce. And you are ready to go!!!

So here is my way of making, One of the versatile and essential Sause “Béchamel sauce”. I just love ❤️ the word: bay/shah/mehl.

Ingredients

60 gms butter

60 gms flour

600 ml hot milk

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon grinded black or white pepper

1 bay leaf

pinch of nutmeg

Divine Béchamel sauce

Preparation

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan, add flour. 

Constantly stir the butter & flour mixture, but don’t let it brown. 

Whisk until smooth, then slightly pour milk little by little. Do not add all the milk in one go as it may become lumpy. 

Continue to stir as the sauce get thicken. 

Add pepper, salt, pinch of nutmeg and bay leaf. Bring it to a boil. 

Remove from the heat. Also, remove the bay leaf after the flavors have infused.

 Cool this sauce for later use.

What is roux?

Roux

 A hot mixture of equal amount of butter & flour is roux. Roux is  made by melting butter & flour, cook together in to a smooth paste without any lumps. It is used as a thickening agent in the formation of sauces and soups. 

How to use Béchamel sauce?

This sauce is a mother Sause for many creamy recipes. Well goes with lasagna, baked vegetables, pastas and macaroni. 

Recipe notes

Keep the flame low from starting to the end.

You can turn this white sauce recipe into a pasta or cheese sauce by adding cheese.

You can add an onion studded with cloves to this sauce along with other spice while boiling. Remove the bay leaf and onion studded cloves from the sauce once is done.

Milk should be enough warm before adding it to the hot roux. Warm milk helps to prevent lumps from forming. 

Hope you will try this recipe😊😊

Reach out to me at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtCD0lLZFT4