[Basic] Sauce Béchamel

In late 19th century and early 20th century, the father of haute cuisine, chef Auguste Escoffier consolidated sauces used in French cuisine into five 'mother' sauces. You can pretty much build up any French sauces based on the mother sauces.

1. Sauce Béchamel (white sauce) = milk + white roux
2. Sauce Velouté = white stock + white roux
3. Sauce Hollandaise = egg yolk + clarified butter + lemon juice
4. Sauce Tomate = tomato based sauce
5. Sauce Espagnole (brown sauce) = brown veal stock based sauce


Béchamel sauce can be used as a binding agent in many pasta dishes or vegetable dishes. The sauce is most famously used in lasagna where it prevents the pasta from drying out during the baking, and binds the pasta with any other sauce, such as bolognese. You can also make a decent cheese sauce (mornay sauce) by adding grated cheese into the béchamel sauce and melting it... with which you can make great gourmet mac and cheese!

[Basic] Sauce Béchamel
(Yield: 1 pint / Cooking time: 20 minutes)

Ingredients:
+ 25g unsalted butter
+ 25g all-purpose flour
+ 2 and 1/2 cups milk
+ nutmeg
+ salt/pepper

Procedures:
1. Melt butter in a pan over low heat.


2. Sprinkle flour and stir with a wooden spoon to mix the butter and flour well. Cook the roux for a few minutes. The color should still be light (="white roux"), and not browned (="brown roux"). Turn off the heat and let it cool.


3. While the roux is cooling, bring one pint of milk to a boil in a separate pot. Pour the hot milk to cooled roux. Whisk well not to have any roux lumps and bring to a boil to activate the roux as a thickening agent.


4. Lower the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce reaches napant consistency. (If the sauce is reduced too much, please add a bit more of milk to loosen the sauce.)


5. Season with salt & pepper, and add pinch of freshly grated nutmeg.


6. To make sure there are no lumps of roux, strain the sauce through a fine strainer.


7. If you don't use it right away, cool down (it will be thicker when cooled) and store in a fridge.