The bechamel sauce is used in many classic recipes such as lasagne, croquettes, gratins or eventually to accompany a meat. It is also known as white sauce in some countries. How to make an easy bechamel sauce? This easy recipe gives you all the tricks to prepare a delicious bechamel sauce, without sifting the flour .
The name of the bechamel sauce originates from the French chef Louis de Béchamail, who was one of Louis XIV’s butlers in the seventeenth century. He surely improved on an old version of another sauce called “roux” in French, a mixture of flour and butter, which is used in various dishes of French and Italian cuisine for even longer. Over time, the bechamel sauce has become a ubiquitous dish of international cuisine, and you can find it in many recipes such as lasagne, croquettes, gratins …
As always, you can find an industrial ready-to-use version in supermarkets, but the homemade easy bechamel sauce is obviously tastier, and you can adapt the texture, light or heavy, regarding your needs.
I like :
- There are as many variation as taste in the world: the most common seasoning for the bechamel sauce, apart from salt and pepper, is nutmeg but you can also add curry, mustard, white wine, cheese etc.
- You can make the sauce’s texture more or less creamy depending how you are going to accommodate it. For example use half the milk if you want to make croquettes, so that the bechamel is more creamy.
How to make it work:
- Use a wooden spoon to prepare the sauce.
- To avoid lumps, simmer the mixture of flour and butter a couple of minutes during the 1st step, before starting to add milk, stirring with a spoon all the time.
- ADD THE SEASONING AT THE END of cooking, once the sauce has the good texture, and be very generous with it, so that the sauce is not bland.
INGREDIENT FOR 600 ml OF SAUCE :
- 3 tbsp (40g) butter
- 1/2 US cup (40g) flour
- 2 1/2 US cup (600ml) milk
- Salt, pepper, nutmeg and any other seasoning that you usually use
Easy Bechamel sauce or white sauce recipe
- Melt the butter in a pot, and once it’s starting to make bubbles, add the flour all at one. Melt it with the spoon, and let it cook a couple of minutes.
- Then add a little bit of milk and melt it together. Once it’s absorbed, add a little bit more and repeat the operation several times until the mixture starts to look like a cream. You can stop here for a heavy sauce. If not, add more milk and keep melting with the spoon even when all the milk has been added, and so during around 10 more minutes, until it starts to be thick but not too much neither. It needs to stay liquid.
- Turn off the fire, and then add salt, pepper, the nutmeg and any other seasoning that pleases you.
Bon appétit!