Simple white bechamel sauce. Here is a quick and easy way to prepare your base sauce which will feature in a lot of our future recipes.
The seasoning can vary to your taste, however, traditionally you should use bay leaves, nutmeg, clove, olive oil, onion, salt, and pepper. But we have trimmed this down to the essentials so you can get yourself the best sauce with minimal effort and ingredients.
15 minutes
Serves 4 +
Ingredients for basic bechamel sauce:
- 75g butter
- 75g plain flour
- 750ml milk
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 garlic clove
- Pinch of nutmeg
- 1 allspice berry
- 1 tsp olive oil
Method:
- Add the butter to a saucepan on low heat. And melt the butter.
- Add the flour and mix with a whisk until consistent.
- Once the sauce is bubbling, remove it from the heat and using a sieve, strain to remove the bay leaf, clove, and allspice berry.
- Add the milk and all the other ingredients and cook for 10 minutes at low heat, mixing continuously to ensure it does not stick.
- If your sauce comes out a little thick to your liking, then just add a little more milk to thin it out to the consistency you wish.
Done. It is that easy and it will be featured in our other recipes. Once you’ve made this once or twice you will get very adept to this recipe and will be used in cooking for the rest of time.
You can substitute the milk with soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk (unsweetened). In addition, you can also change the butter for milk-free alternative spreads. This will alter the flavour, but you can always add more seasoning or nutritional yeast to get that umami taste back.
Are you interested in how to use the sauce? We got you covered. Here you will find our favourite recipes with bechamel sauce.
Send to us photos of your creation and tag us on social media @cravemonkeypl (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook).
