A sauce to build upon or something to spot on? Check out this Béchamel sauce recipe that will open the door for a world of joy!

Béchamel or white sauce or white gravy is one of the five mother sauces of French cuisine. It’s made from white roux which is equal part of flour and butter mixture by weight and milk.

There are many legends about the origin of the Béchamel sauce spanning back centuries but the first recipe similar to modern Béchamel just a couple of hundred years old.

The name of the sauce was given in honor of Louis de Béchamel who served as the chief steward of King Louis XIV of France in the 17^th century.

The first recipe using the name Béchamel, although similar to the fairly simple modern variety, is different in allowing more ingredients and variations of spices and herbs.

Modern Béchamel uses only butter, flour and milk as the base sauce flavored with salt and occasionally nutmeg as a seasoning base.

Being a mother sauce means being a white canvas for ideas to be spread on. Béchamel is used in a wide variety of dishes with various additional ingredients to complement the final dining experience.

Some of the additions earn the right to have their own name like Mornay sauce that is also known in less culinary savvy circles as cheese sauce and used in many dishes like the Greek Pastitsio, Mac n’ cheese or Moussaka just to name a few.

Once we make our white sauce canvas, the ingredients are limitless to put on, but the question is if we can really take the reins off to enjoy the ride.

Ingredients

7 tablespoons / 100g Butter
⅞ cup / 100g Flour
2 cups / 500ml Milk
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt

How to make Béchamel sauce

Melt butter in a skillet then mix in the flour and salt.
Vigorously whisk the slowly poured milk in. It may be lumpy at first
Keep whisking. (Heating the milk beforehand helps keep it from lumping up if our whisking technique is inadequate.)
Add salt and nutmeg (or pepper) to taste.

Enjoy!

Béchamel is a great start but why to stop there?

F.A.Q.

What is the difference between Béchamel and white sauce?

Nothing. Béchamel sauce and white sauce are one and the same, only there are some people who know how white sauce is referred to in culinary circles.

What does Béchamel sauce taste like?

The base spices for Béchamel are salt and nutmeg and this is exactly how Béchamel tastes like. Salty nutmeg on a creamy bed. Of course, if we use black pepper and salt then it will taste like that.

Is lasagna sauce the same as Béchamel?

No, lasagna sauce, if there is such thing, is made with tomato and ground meat. The whitish thing in lasagna is supposed to be cheese.

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