jump to navigation

Basic White Sauce

A basic white sauce (in fancy french terms, a béchamel) is so easy to do and is the backbone of many recipes (pasta sauce, casseroles, etc). There are 3 basic ingredients, and how you change the ratio between them determines how thick or runny the sauce is. The three ingredients are butter, flour and milk.

Ingredient Basic Thick Binding Thin/Soup
Butter 2 Tbsp 3 Tbsp 3 Tbsp 1 Tbsp
Flour 2 Tbsp 3 Tbsp 1/3 cup 1 Tbsp
Milk 1 cup 1 cup 1 cup 1 cup

The basic sauce, the first column, is the one you’ll use the most, but I include the other ones, to help explain how the thickness is variable. You can substitute chicken or vegetable stock in for the milk and make a velouté sauce (velvet sauce). You can also use cream (or whipping cream) to make it a bit richer, or rice milk if you like. You can easily double the recipe, or half it, depending on how much you need. The sauce can be refrigerated for several days, or frozen. The thin sauce makes a great creamy soup base!

whisk

The technique is simple enough; melt the butter over medium-low (3 out of 10) heat in a sauce pan proportional to the amount of sauce you want to make. Add the flour and whisk it until it makes a smooth paste. Let it cook for a minute or 2, whisking to keep it smooth, and letting the heat bring out a nice, nutty flavour in the flour. Slowly add the milk. Whisk the mixture constantly (or almost constantly) while it thickens, a few minutes. A mini-whipper works great. Bring up the heat a little and let the sauce simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To this sauce, you can add:

- 1/2 tsp Worchestershire sauce

- 1 tsp lemon or lime juice, or cooking sherry

- 2 Tbsp chopped parsley, chives, or other herbs

- grated cheese (whatever variety you like)

You can certainly get all fancy by scalding the milk before hand, but it’s pretty unnecessary. This recipe is a great standard, and very fast and easy to make. Let your imagination help you pick ingredients to add!

Comments»

no comments yet - be the first?