Uses For White Sauce

Does anyone make béchamel sauce any more I wonder?  Well you probably don’t very often but if you cook at home you might be more likely to make a basic white sauce. 

It is an essential component of macaroni or cauliflower cheese for example, and lasagne, moussaka or cannelloni, and it is not difficult to make as long as you follow a few simple rules which I will touch on later. 

They are the most obvious dishes but you might also combine a basic white sauce with onion as an accompaniment to roast lamb, or with parsley, chopped hard boiled egg or mushrooms for serving with fish.  It is the main component of a soufflé (mix three egg yolks into ¼ pint of stiff sauce and fold in the stiffly beaten whites), and it is delicious with baby beetroots.

Poured over eggs, poached or boiled, and sprinkled with cheese before being flashed under the grill, with or without ham, spinach or asparagus and served with a green salad makes an easy supper, and it has many other culinary uses.

Unless you are a very experienced cook it is always better to measure your ingredients and even then for some things it is vital.  For white sauce of a pouring consistency you will need about 1 oz of butter and flour to ½ pint of milk and for a thick sauce, which you would need for a soufflé for example you need to double the butter and flour or to halve the amount of milk.

Mix the flour into the melted butter and let it cook for a couple of minutes before adding the milk.  At this point you must stir or whisk constantly until the mixture has heated and thickened.  Alternatively you can heat the milk first and pour it on to the roux.  If you do it this way take the pan off the heat and whisk furiously as it will thicken up instantly.  Let it cook for a while, season and then beat in a knob of butter. This will give a velvety finish.

If you don’t need it immediately press a piece of film over the surface to prevent a skin from forming.