French Cooking ~ Béchamel Recipe

Recipe yields about 2 cups of Béchamel

Béchamel is a French white sauce, kind of like sausage gravy that is served with biscuits here in the US, without the sausage.  We use it as a base for a lot of meals such as lasagna, shepherds pie, casseroles, and I personally love it in crêpes!
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen the video already ~it's also at the end of this post~, and today I am finally sharing the recipe...

Ingredients 

2 1/2 Tbsp of butter

2 Tbsp of flour

2 cups of milk

1 tsp of salt

1/4 tsp of nutmeg or all spice
1/4 tsp pepper (optional)

Directions

1.  Heat the butter until melted.

2.  Add the flour and mix in the butter with a wooden spoon.  Cook under medium to low heat for about 5 minutes until it becomes golden.

3.  Add the milk: a 1/2 cup at a time. 

4.  Mix well with the wooden spoon ~or a whisk~ until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth ~See my Instagram video on the bottom of this post to see it in action~.

The flour mixture and milk will thicken as you mix it together while heating up.

Before adding more milk, make sure the mixture becomes smooth, no lumps.

 5.  When you see a couple of bubbles popping up on the surface, then add more milk and repeat until all milk is used.

6.  Turn the heat off and add salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Mix it up.  It's ready!

Tips and tricks to a perfect Béchamel sauce

The béchamel should not have any lumps.  It should be a smooth silky gravy.

In order to not get any lumps, you have to make sure to mix very well; quite vigorously and almost constantly.

Also, it is important to let the mixture thicken each time prior to adding more milk.  When the sauce is thick, get rid of any big or small lumps by mixing some more because if you add liquid while a lot of lumps are present, it will be pretty hard to get rid of them later on.

Béchamel sauce can be used in pretty much any meal.  I like to add it as a nice flavor to a healthy and simple dinner where vegetables are the main ingredients or as I mentioned earlier in the crêpes ~stay tuned, I will post the recipe for these tomorrow, with my secret ingredients!! Shuut ;) ...~

Check out this video for more details on how to make the perfect béchamel.