Bechamel is a very important sauce that you can – and will – use in many recipes because of its versatility and its delicate taste.
Once you try it, you’ll have no doubt that its origin is French and in fact it takes its name from its inventor, the Marquis Louis de Nointel de Béchameil, a wealthy banker who became the maître d’hôtel at Louis XIV court. Because of his outstanding cooking skills, the Sun King awarded him the Blue Ribbon of the Order of The Holy Spirit, which later became a symbol of culinary excellence, the well known Cordon Bleu.
Because of its wide use in Western cuisine, béchamel is considered a “mother sauce”. It is a white warm sauce that is rarely eaten alone but is instead used as a binding ingredient in meat recipes, in souffles, in vegetables flans, and in dishes au gratin.
Béchamel sauce is very simple to prepare. Just make sure that the flour is not too abundant, that it doesn’t toast in the butter and that it doesn’t form any lumps.
Ingredients: A V Ef
(for 4 people)
- 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 2 cups 2% milk
- Salt
- Pepper
- A pinch of nutmeg
Warm up the milk in a saucepan.
Melt the butter in another saucepan. Add the flour a tablespoon at a time, constantly stirring, and cook for a few minutes making sure that mixture remains a nice yellow color and doesn’t turn brown.
Add the hot milk a little at a time, stirring fast to avoid forming any lumps.
Add salt and pepper, the nutmeg and cook for 20 minutes, always stirring.
The result should be a velvety white sauce, not too runny and not too thick.