(AKA: Simple White Sauce!)
White sauce is so much more simple than you would ever think. Yet we invariable dismiss it because it just seems to be too tricky. And, it is so very versatile! Mama would use it as a cream sauce for new potatoes and green beans or peas when the garden began to produce. Or she would add cheese to it, mix it with steamed cauliflower and get us to happily eat that rather unpleasant vegetable. Our most favorite meal was when she would make it, add canned tuna and some peas, and serve it on toast for supper...that was my most requested Friday night supper! Now that I am grown up, the thing I like most to use it for is Broccoli Cheese Soup. Yumm!
Béchamel Sauce
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chicken stock, water, or liquid from your vegetables or potatoes
1 cup milk
sprinkle of nutmeg (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup or more grated cheese, if you are making a cheese sauce
(You see that I have all the ingredients ready to go. The sauce thickens very quickly, so you need everything ready to go when you start.)
Melt the butter in a large pan, then add the flour and stir until it bubbles. Stirring constantly (this keeps it from lumping up) add the liquid in a stream. As the sauce heats up, the mixture will become thick. Adjust the sauce to the thickness desired for what you are making. (I add twice as much milk and chicken stock when I make broccoli cheese soup.) Then season to taste and add the cheese if you are making cheese sauce. Lastly, add to vegetables or tuna or any other thing you want to make delicious! --Oh! I forgot to mention that this can be added to cooked macaroni for macaroni and cheese, or potatoes for scalloped potatoes....hey...just make it your own! It is a wonderfully versatile thing!
You make it sound so easy! Are you going to give us your cheesy broccoli soup too??