A long time ago I began what turned out to be a long and invested relationship with cooking. At first, I was cooking bachelor style fitness food and toyed with nutrient balanced meals for clients with similar lifestyles. This led to appreciating food that is homemade and tastes awesome enough to eat often without burnout. I also began having the ability to control my food flavors and textures in a manner that aligned well with my autistic eccentricities BUT that is a discussion for another time. Once I became comfortable with cooking, I began looking into some formal cooking strategies that expanded rapidly after my daughter was born. I was ready for homemade delicious family cooking with my new redheaded mini-Merida. I began baking with her constantly and introducing her to every kind of fancy food her little royal palate was ready for. One of the most important staples in that cooking was a basic French béchamel sauce. It has an interesting place in formal cooking, so I will touch on it enough to understand what and why then break into what is so amazing about it. 

Béchamel is one of 5 sauces referred to as “Mother Sauces” due to being considered the primary base sauces to make many other French sauces. They are the foundation for building so many magical dishes but are certainly not limited to fancy French things. Béchamel is generally considered the first sauce you will learn to make, and it is such a wonderful place to start for your average person looking to have a universal base that can go as far as the imagination will travel. The ingredients for most of these sauces are as simple as butter, flour, and a liquid. Béchamel uses milk as the liquid to reduce, and then you have the butter and flour to make a roux. A roux is simply flour cooked into a fat, most often butter. The entirety of making a béchamel is broken down into two steps, make the roux and then reduce the milk. Whisk and be patient and then whisk and be patient again. It is simple enough that I will go ahead and tell you the recipe and afterwards we can discuss what you do with it. 

Ingredients: 

2 tablespoons unsalted butter 

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 

2 cups of whole milk (separate into two 1 cup portions) 

½ teaspoon of salt 

¼ teaspoon of pepper 

Start by using a quality saucepan and set the stove to medium-low (slightly above a 3 if you have a number dial). Melt the butter thoroughly in the pan. Add the flour and whisk together as it heats up. It will have little bubbles on the edges, and you want to keep whisking until you smell the butter getting richer and the color gets just a shade darker yellow. This can take about 3 minutes. You do not want to get impatient and turn up the heat or let it cook until it begins to brown. A nice dark yellow at best and a lovely rich cooked butter smell. Thats the first part done. Look at you, you made a blond roux!  

Next you want to pour in the first cup of milk. Do not be shy about it or go slow. Get the whole cup in there and whisk away. A note about the milk, you can heat up the milk before you pour it in or set it out as you start preparing to get it room temperature or use it cold. The only difference it makes is how long the sauce will take to come to a boil. Once the milk starts you must keep whisking nonstop so remember that before you get going. If you need a second before you pour the milk for any reason just remove the saucepan from the heat and then put it back when you are ready. Whisk the first cup until it is smooth and has no lumps at all. This can be very quick so do not worry if it is done faster than you thought it would take. Now pour in the second cup of milk with the salt and pepper and continue whisking away. Turn the stove up to medium and whisk until the sauce thickens and has steamy bubbles popping. This can take about 5 minutes using cold milk. Once it reaches that point continue whisking for about 2 minutes. Now you take it off the heat and you have a béchamel sauce….. but now what? 

I can tell you we love doing three things in my house after this point: stir in about a cup or more of shredded cheddar cheese and stir into cooked shells for the best mac and cheese ever, add the cheddar but then after use a couple heavy squirts of sriracha to make a spicy cheese sauce to go on nachos/tacos/tostadas, or add some garlic powder and about half a cup of grated parmesan to become an Italian style white sauce to go on any pasta. When you add the further ingredients, you can keep the stove on medium-low heat and put the saucepan on and off to keep it hot enough to blend but not burn. Béchamel has a basic flavor profile that will absorb anything you put into it and turn it into a medium thick sauce. Just think of flavors you love and start putting them together. Add grilled ham or bacon with Swiss cheese to use with baked pasta or add garlic and onions then pour it over pan seared chicken. When you have done it a few times and are no longer nervous about the process you can hop online and start pulling recipes and ideas until you have a limitless toolbox to pull from. I made a sauce today to have the process fresh in my mind for writing and we added garlic, parmesan, tossed it in the crockpot with cheese ravioli, topped it with mozzarella and feta. Sitting here writing I can smell it cooking and it is intoxicating.  Do yourself and your family a favor and give it a couple tries. You will not be disappointed at how much better it tastes and feels compared to the stuff in the jars on the store shelf. Get creative and impress everyone including yourself.