Béchamel (Milk Sauce)
A basic sauce built on milk and rich butter! This tasty milk sauce works with just about any dish. It's the base for countless variations used all over the kitchen — for baking, gratins, or simply as a finishing sauce for a main course.
liliaa
Recipe author
Béchamel (Milk Sauce)
Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe
By weight of the composition:
Proteins 9 %
5 g
Fats 50 %
29 g
Carbohydrates 41 %
24 g
376 kcal
GI:
8
/
0
/
92
- The basic recipe has just three main ingredients, but with a little imagination you can play with add-ins and surprise your family every time. The secret to a great milk sauce is using good-quality ingredients — ideally natural, farm-fresh butter and milk, plus a good all-purpose (or bread) flour with strong gluten. Let's get started. Melt the butter over low heat in a heavy-bottomed pot or sauté pan; don't let it brown, just melt it — keep an eye on it. Add the sifted flour and stir well right away with a wooden spoon so no lumps form. Cook the flour in the butter for no more than a minute, just long enough to lose the raw-flour taste without taking on color. Now start adding cold milk, not all at once but in small additions, whisking well after each. The mixture will gradually turn satiny and loose. (If you add the milk too fast and it seizes up too thick, pull the pot off the heat and keep stirring — it'll loosen back up, and then you can return it to the stove.) Once half the milk is in, switch from the wooden spoon to a whisk to give the sauce some air. Keep whisking and add the rest of the liquid. The sauce will become silky, soft, and smooth. Warm it for no more than 5 minutes, just until it thickens. Season to taste with salt and ground black pepper (white pepper works nicely too). You can add other spices or herbs as you like, but a tiny pinch of nutmeg definitely won't go amiss. If you're not using all the sauce right away, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface so a skin doesn't form. Enjoy!
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Whole cow's milk - 68 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.5% fat content - 64 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.2% fat content - 60 kcal/100g
- Milk 1.5% fat content - 47 kcal/100g
- Concentrated milk 7.5% fat content - 140 kcal/100g
- Milk 2.5% fat content - 54 kcal/100g
- Ground black pepper - 255 kcal/100g
- Whole durum wheat flour fortified - 333 kcal/100g
- Whole durum wheat flour, universal - 364 kcal/100g
- Flour krupchatka - 348 kcal/100g
- Flour - 325 kcal/100g
- Butter 82% - 734 kcal/100g
- Amateur unsalted butter - 709 kcal/100g
- Unsalted peasant butter - 661 kcal/100g
- Peasant salted butter - 652 kcal/100g
- Melted butter - 869 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Nutmeg - 556 kcal/100g
Similar recipes
Related and additional categories: