by Jimmy Cocktail
11. December 2009 06:13
Today’s post, will be the second piece of the puzzle towards the dish I made on Tuesday. Béchamel isn’t necessarily a dish unto itself, you’d never serve a steaming bowl of hot béchamel unless you are functionally degraded. However, it is a wonderful sauce for several dishes such as lasagna or as a base component for things such as cheese sauces. In fact, my macaroni and cheese dish uses béchamel as the base for the cheese sauce and it is out of this world. The mac and cheese is a story for another day though.
By all accounts, béchamel is very easy to make. At it’s core, it is a butter and flour roux to which scalding milk is whisked into. The thickness of the sauce is governed by the proportions of milk and flour. A very traditional rendering of béchamel would use 2 Tbs butter, 2 Tbs flour and 1 cup of milk. For my recipe, I wanted it a bit thicker so I increased the butter and flour to 3 Tbs each. I’ll give the classic recipe here and you can experiment with the proportions for whichever dish you decide to make. I also made one other change, that was instead of using an onion studded with clove I used chopped onion and loose clove then strained. I use a small sauce pan to make this and I find this technique easier to work with.
Béchamel Sauce
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 small onion
3 whole cloves
Peel the onion and stick the cloves into it, set aside. In a small sauce pan, melt the bitter over medium heat and then slowly add the flour. Cook for about three minutes stirring constantly. Slowly add the milk and whisk until fully blended. (Author’s note: You do not want this to clump. When I say to slowly add the milk, that means about 1 Tbs at a time and whisk thoroughly until the roux reaches a liquid like quality. Repeat adding a little more milk each time until all the milk is added.) Once the milk and roux are combined, add the salt and the onion and cook over medium low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not boil the mixture and do not let it burn or stick to the bottom of the pan.
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