How to Make Béchamel Sauce

How to Make Béchamel Sauce Okay. Classic culinary training, you’ll always learn the five mother sauces and we won’t go into that too much detail but we are going to create one today called Béchamel. And while very rarely eaten as is it’s used to make lots and lots of different dishes and you’ll see. So this is kind of a boring demo but what we do with the sauce so exciting. So, here we go, we got a quart a whole milk, I got a half a cup of flour, I got one stick of sweet butter meaning unsalted. That’s also known as half a cup four ounces. I need some salt and pepper. Now, I’m a cayenne guy. I like cayenne, a lot of people use white pepper and some salt. And traditionally, a little bit of fresh thyme goes on this so I got little four, five little small sprigs of fresh thyme and a nutmeg. So I’m not using a powder nutmeg. I'm actually going to grate some fresh nutmeg in there, really supernatural products try to find some fresh nutmeg and almost is important as the ingredients is the pot you can use, okay. So pretty much anything will work as long as it has a nice thick bottom that disperses the heat and it prevents the sauce from scorching, okay. There’s nothing worst than burned creamer milk flavors so make sure you are using a good quality pack. And step one you’re going to melt your butter we are going to make a roux here, R.O.U.X, and as low in low guy when it comes to Béchamel, alright. In a restaurant I had this on higher heat. I'm being more of a hurry but at home take your time, alright. So on low heat maybe low, medium low. Well, forget that low. On low heat mouth to butter and how would you know when to put your flour in? You see that white foam that comes at the top in a minute or two? That’s going to slowly disappear is the butter kind of bubbles and when you see that white foam just about are gone, you’re ready for your flour. Now once you have brown the butter, so don’t go too far all right? But when you see just about all that away from gone, dump in your butter then we’re still on low, we’re going to go low the whole way here and we just made what’s called a roux, so its half butter and half flour. Now traditionally, it’s by weight flour and butter which gives you a little more flour in the classic method. This works better for the home chef and I’d like it better so I go by volume half and half okay regardless. You’re going to cook your roux for five to six minutes which is going to cook out that kind of pasty starchy taste, alright. And where this is actually known as a white really even though it’s not really white, it’s kind of tan. You don’t want to color the roux, you see you can brown a roux that quite easily and that’s done for different dishes but in a Béchamel, you want a white roux which means cooked very low. Again, just about five or six minutes or so. Now very important, the other key factor in this sauce, you’re adding cold liquid milk in this case, cold liquid to the sauce. So I’m going to do some three editions. The first one which is a splash kind of get it going, the second one you saw like a cup stored that in, and now for the third edition, I’m just going to dump the whole rest of the quart in and the secret was that cold liquid heat in the hot roux, you will not get lost, okay? So that’s kind of the number one commandment in making a Béchamel. Make sure your liquid is cold and your roux is hot. I put in – I don’t know that was like an eight of a teaspoon of cayenne, about a half a teaspoon of salt. Now because we’re going to usually use the sauce and other things, you know be careful with the seasoning because you may do it just a very light green and nutmeg that’s you know barely sixteenth, eighth of a teaspoon or so, just a hint. And I chopped up that thyme, that was again maybe half a teaspoon or so, alright. And we’re going to stir that on a low heat, we’re going to bring that up to a simmer and again I just want you to watch. As soon as you see some very small bubbles come to the top, see there is one. Here we go, alright, so there’s another bubble, okay, so we’re simmering. Now, one thing to keep in mind is when a roux base sauce comes to a simmer, that’s about a steak is going to get, okay. So don’t expect this to thicken as it cooks. You pretty much and that’s all we want. See it’s like medium thick Béchamel and I’m just going to let this simmer on real low as low as it will go for about 10 minutes just too kind of finish it off and there we go. So that’s a – just a beautiful luxurious Béchamel and we’re going to use this to make so many delicious dishes. In fact tomorrow, we’re going to make a delicious Broccoli Gratin, that’s just amazing. Alright, so from those medium ingredients, we’ve created one of the mother sauces, sauce Béchamel and again, those you that actually take our online culinary course. You’re going to learn all the five mother sauces but there’s one that I’ll give you a little head start. So anyway, stay tuned for many delicious dishes to come using this classic sauce, enjoy.