Béchamel sauce

✅ The essentials

Béchamel is a white roux over which you pour milk while whisking, and five minutes on medium heat until it thickens. It is the sauce for lasagne, gratins, croque-monsieur, ham-wrapped endives. It takes ten minutes, with three ingredients you always have.

🍳 The method

1. Make a white roux: 40 g melted butter, 40 g flour, two minutes on medium heat, stirring.
2. Pour in a third of the milk, 500 ml in all, whisking. It forms a thick paste: that is normal.
3. Add the rest of the milk in two goes, still whisking, until it is smooth.
4. Let it cook on medium heat, stirring, four to five minutes: the sauce thickens and coats the spoon.
5. Salt, pepper, a pinch of grated nutmeg if you have some. Taste.

⚖️ The quantities

40 g butter, 40 g flour, 500 ml milk: a béchamel for a gratin or a lasagne dish for four. For a cheese sauce, add 80 g grated gruyère off the heat at the end.

⏱️ How long it takes

Ten minutes, staying at the pot.

🩹 If it goes wrong

Lumps: whisk hard, or a go with the immersion blender, or pass it through a sieve. Too thick: a little milk while whisking. Too thin: two more minutes on medium heat, it thickens as it cooks, and more as it cools. A taste of flour: it has not cooked enough, two more minutes.

🍽️ Make it tonight

The ham and pasta gratin, with this béchamel on top and twenty-five minutes in the oven.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Béchamel (for a gratin serving 4)

• 40 g butter
• 40 g flour
• 500 ml milk
• Salt, pepper, nutmeg