The decadent white béchamel sauce is a staple of French cuisine. You haven’t experimented enough cooking if you haven’t tried making the béchamel sauce yet. This versatile sauce takes the crown to serve as the base for several other savoury dishes and sauces. One of the many reasons why béchamel sauce can be a beginner-friendly recipe; is because you can prepare it in no time with just simple ingredients.

Photo by Dairy Farmers of Canada
Photo by Dairy Farmers of Canada

Table of Contents

  1. What is Bechamel Sauce? 
  2. Easiest Recipe to prepare Bechamel Sauce
    1. General Information
    2. Ingredients
    3. Tools Required
    4. Preparation Process 
  3. Tips for Perfecting the Bechamel Sauce 
  4. FAQs
    1. Are Bechamel Sauce and Alfredo Sauce the Same? 
    2. How Can You Use Bechamel Sauce? 
    3. Is It Better to Buy Bechamel Sauce? 
  5. To Sum Up 

You can use this all-in-one classic sauce impressively to delight your taste buds in different ways. Toddlers, teenagers, and old folks, it’s a recipe that will cater to everyone’s needs. Behold! Do You know what’s unique about this béchamel sauce recipe? It uses a cream whipper to achieve the perfect texture for this sauce. 

This article explores the a-to-z history pertaining to béchamel sauce and how to master cooking it. 

What is Bechamel Sauce? 

Bechamelsaus er en av de enkleste franske oppskriftene. Sausen inkluderer å kombinere helmelk og roux. Rouxen tjener til å tykne sausen og er en kombinasjon av like deler smør og hvitt mel. Béchamel bruker bare en håndfull vanlige ingredienser som mel, melk og smør.

Noen foretrekker også å krydre sausen med salt og pepper. Du kan også heve og modifisere sausen med andre krydder, men det er valgfritt. Du kan bruke sitron, muskat eller laurbærblad for å få en dyp smak.

Du kan bruke béchamel som saus alene eller bruke den som base for andre retter. Du vil bli overrasket over å se hvordan béchamelsaus også kan bidra til kompliserte retter som gratinert og lasagne. I et nøtteskall er en béchamelsaus det perfekte eksempelet på en jevn, strukturert og rik saus.

Easiest Recipe to prepare Bechamel Sauce

Before mixing the ingredients, make sure you have all the ingredients at hand. Besides, it would be best if you were mindful of the quality of each element. For instance, minimally processed butter is perfect for béchamel sauce and so on and so forth.

Also, milk from grass-fed cows or organic milk adds a slightly better flavour to the end product. Here’s our foolproof recipe to make a lovely béchamel sauce using a cream whipper: 

General Information

  • Difficulty or Expertise Level: Medium
  • Cooking Time: 1 hour 
  • Recipe Benefits: Low in cost and increased output 
  • Yields: 2.2x 
  • Number of Shakes: 18 times 

Ingredients

  • White pepper – 1 g 
  • Shallots – 25 g 
  • Salt – 1 g 
  • Nutmeg – 1 g 
  • Milk – 400ml 
  • Lemon juice – 1 ml 
  • Garlic cloves – 1 clove 
  • Flour – 25g 
  • Butter – 25g 
  • Bay leaves – 2 leaves 

Tools Required

  • Sieve 
  • Cream whipper with nitrous oxide charger 

Preparation Process 

  1. The first step involves melting the butter in a heated saucepan. 
  2. Next, saute the diced onions or shallots until they turn pink. 
  3. The third step involves adding the flour and mixing it. At the same stage, pour the cold milk into the mixture.
  4. Now, you have to add the bay leaves and leave the sauce to boil on low flame, for up to 10 minutes. Make sure to give the sauce an occasional stir to avoid sticking to the bottom or burning. 
  5. Further, add the remaining seasoning and a dash of lemon juice. 
  6. After the above steps are complete, sieve the mixture to clear any lumps. 
  7. Pour the sieved mixture into a cream whipper attached to the nitrous oxide charger. Shake well! 

Make sure to maintain the cream whipper at a constant warm temperature. You can use a water bath or bain-marie for this purpose.

Tips for Perfecting the Bechamel Sauce 

Are you looking for tips beyond the recipe to ensure you get things right? Here are a couple of things that’ll lead you get to an impressively perfect béchamel sauce: 

  • Don’t Forget to Stir, Stir, and Stir: It’s time to put all that workout to some good use. Making béchamel sauce requires constant stirring. You have to continue stirring till the butter melts when you add flour and whisk after pouring the milk. Stirring is essential to prevent the sauce from burning or forming lumps. 
  • Only Quality Ingredients: Good ingredients lead to a good dish, and that’s a no-brainer. Don’t be tempted to use low-fat butter as the texture wouldn’t be as creamy as the classic recipe. 
  • Most Important – Correct Butter & Flour Ratio: When preparing the roux, you have to accurately get the proportion of butter and flour. Too much butter will result in a runny and liquidy sauce. Similarly, extra flour will turn your roux a little lumpy. The accurate ratio is an equal quantity of both ingredients. 
  • Slowly Pour the Milk: One of the biggest don’ts of making béchamel sauce is not to pour all the milk at once. There is a high risk of your roux clumping, if you add the milk at once. The trick here is to add milk in batches.

FAQs

Are Bechamel Sauce and Alfredo Sauce the Same? 

A lot of people confuse béchamel sauce with alfredo sauce. Let us clear the air by stating that the two sauces might share similar ingredients but are not the same. Despite being dairy-based sauces, both of them are distinct. Bechamel is a French sauce that uses roux as a thickener. It includes milk and is the base for other sauces. 

On the flip side, Alfredo means using thick heavy cream for preparation. You have to thicken the sauce by reducing it on the stovetop. Moreover, the sauce is finished with parmesan cheese. 

How Can You Use Bechamel Sauce? 

There are hundreds of ways to use béchamel sauce to enhance your dishes’ taste creatively. Many chefs use white sauce or béchamel sauce as the base for their dishes. Here are some dishes that are incomplete without béchamel sauce: 

  • White sauce pasta
  • Lasagne and other pasta
  • Cheesy French sauce 
  • Moussaka 
  • White parsley sauce 
  • Chowder and soups
  • Mac and cheese
  • Croque  madame
  • Cheese soufflé 
  • Nantua sauce 

Is It Better to Buy Bechamel Sauce? 

Most people live in the misconception that béchamel sauce is a tricky recipe. Besides, you might be enticed by the idea that store-bought béchamel sauce lasts longer than homemade ones. The truth is that store-bought béchamel sauce is loaded with preservatives. 

If you are looking for an authentic taste and delicious experience, you should consider making béchamel sauce at home. It hardly takes 10 minutes to gather the ingredients and turn them into creamy béchamel.

To Sum Up 

Cooking béchamel sauce is not as difficult as you thought! The recipe is straightforward and only requires minimal ingredients. You can make yummy béchamel sauce within just a few minutes. Moreover, most of these ingredients might already be lying around your pantry. 

You can further use this creamy goop to be your base for soufflé, hold your casserole dishes together, and it can even act as a great pasta sauce. Yes, if you were wondering, béchamel sauce indeed has a great shelf life. You can store the white sauce in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.