Cooking Lesson: All Sauced up!

Don’t be scared.  We’re going to learn to make a basic sauce.  Lump free.  No Velveeta.  No soup cans.  No cornstarch.

Let’s get started.  First we make Béchamel, a white sauce.  This is the foundation sauce for many sauces.  The Mumma of sauces, if you will.

Start with 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine.  Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.  You do not want to brown the butter and keeping the temperature low will help you avoid burning the butter.

Mix in 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour. 

Note:  Any fat and flour mixed and cooked together are called a roux.  A roux made properly should look like wet sand that gets clumped together.  Roux is the stepping stone to all things sauce-like; gravy and soup included.  Roux can burn, especially if it’s made with butter, and when it does the entire batch of sauce will taste terrible.  It is fine to brown the roux – it helps develop a nutty good flavor, but be careful not to burn it.  Burnt roux is black and has a bad odor.  Use low to medium heat and stir the roux as you cook it to avoid burning.  You don’t want to skip cooking it completely, because cooking it not only develops the flavor of the roux, but eliminates the flour taste – which is not a good flavor.

Cook the roux over the low heat, stirring so that the flour becomes smoothly incorporated.  Season your roux now by adding 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt.

After cooking a few minutes you are going to begin adding 1/2 cup of milk. 

Note:  You can use cold milk, as long as your pan is not very hot.  For best results, use room temperature milk.  You can just pop in in the microwave for a little bit to take the chill off. 

First, add 2 tablespoons of milk and whisk it into the roux.  It should be smooth and a little glossy looking (it sort of looks like paste at this point).  Do not add any more milk until this is very smooth.  Continue to add the milk slowly, a couple of tablespoons at a time, whisking gently as you go. 

At this point you should have a slightly thickened white sauce.  It should be smooth and lump free.   Tada!  You’ve just made Béchamel sauce!

Feeling frisky?  Let’s turn it up a notch.  Let’s keep going.

Switching out your whisk for a spoon, add 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese.  You can use mild or sharp – or anything in between.  But, because the sauce will diffuse the flavor of the cheese, I suggest using a sharper version to get the best taste.

Add the cheese and use your spoon to mix the cheese into the Béchamel.  Keep stirring, keeping the heat very low, until the cheese is melted and evenly distributed.  Add a drop of worcestershire, a drop of bottled hot sauce, and 1/2 teaspoon of dry mustard.  It will not make it spicy, it just helps develop flavors.  Mix until everything is smooth and incorporated.  Add another 1/4 cup of shredded cheese, remove from the heat and stir until the cheese is melted.

You did it again!  Tada!  Cheddar Cheese Sauce!

Next lesson we’ll tackle some of the other sauces.  But, this should keep you busy for a while!  You can use these for hot pretzels with cheese, queso dips, Welsh rarebit, and even broccoli with cheese sauce.

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