The ability to make a good béchamel sauce should be part of every home-cook’s arsenal along with a perfect Italian tomato sauce for pasta, but getting it right can be tricky. Italian recipes like cannelloni and lasagna depend on a smooth sauce to complement the other ingredients, so if you want to impress your family or dinner guests with a terrific Italian menu you’d better perfect your technique.
The All-In-One Béchamel Sauce Recipe
The traditional method of making béchamel sauce involves melting butter and adding flour, to create a soft paste called a roux, before adding the milk a little at a time. While this method continues to be used widely, in the hands of sometimes inattentive amateur cooks it can produce a rather lumpy end product that might let down your recipe.
The solution is to use the fail safe all-in-one method to produce the easiest béchamel sauce ever.
Ingredients (to make 1 pint)
- 2 ounces butter
- 2 ounces cornflour (about 2 dessertspoons)
- 1 pint (20 fl ounces) milk
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 bay leaf
- Salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste
Method
- Place all the ingredients in a cold saucepan but add the corn-flour last. Place the pan on a medium heat and stir the contents continuously as the sauce begins to warm through. A wooden spoon works best, if only because the constant sound of a metal spoon scraping against the side of a metal saucepan will set your teeth on edge. The secret of this technique is to keep stirring and avoid the temptation to increase the heat to speed things up.
- You’ll notice very quickly the butter beginning to melt while the flour has dispersed evenly in the milk without any lumps forming. Keep stirring until the sauce comes to a slow boil and thickens; this may take 5 to 10 minutes.
- When the sauce has reached the desired consistency, turn the heat off and continue stirring for just a few moments until any bubbling stops. Fish out the bay leaf and throw it away, then use your smooth, tasty béchamel sauce in a spinach and ricotta cannelloni or vegetable lasagna recipe.
More Tips and Tricks
- You can use this as a basis for a cheese sauce by stirring in a good handful of grated cheddar until it has melted completely.
- You can experiment with the amount of corn-flour you use to achieve different sauce consistencies, or if you find that the end product is too thick you can simply stir in a little extra milk to thin it little by little.
- If the sauce is too thin, mix a teaspoon of extra cornflour with a little milk until you get a smooth paste. Pour this into the sauce while stirring to thicken it some more.
Alasdair Smith - Scottish-based education, travel, family-history and food writer with a passion for all things French and Italian.
