Of all the white bechamel sauces, most often cooking and restaurant chefs and housewives. A simple recipe over time has become almost synonymous with gourmet cuisine, although in fact there is nothing special about it. This is a simple gravy option that was popular in medieval Europe.
Bechamel at home can be cooked no worse than in a restaurant. And having mastered the basic recipe, it's time to start the experiments. To spoil the taste of the traditional sauce is unlikely to succeed, but to enrich it with new notes is easy! With bechamel sauce, pasta is served, lasagna is made on it, it is added to various vegetable and meat casseroles.
Bechamel sauce at home - general principles of cooking
The main ingredients of the sauce are butter, flour and milk. Butter should not be replaced with a spread - the taste will be clearly worse. Milk can take any fat. Flour should be white, best of the highest grade. All the additional ingredients, including nutmeg, pepper, bay leaf, greens are variations on the theme of the traditional sauce.
To make bechamel sauce at home, you will need metal utensils, such as a saucepan or stew pan. In principle, you can cook bechamel in a conventional skillet with high sides or in a multicooker bowl.
Classic Bechamel Sauce
The main bechamel sauce at home is prepared in literally 20 minutes. A minimum amount of ingredients is required, which is why this sauce enjoys great sympathy of the chefs.
Ingredients:
• one hundred grams of butter;
• half a liter of milk;
• two tablespoons of flour;
• salt to taste (half a teaspoon).
Cooking Method:
Melt butter on a dry skillet. It is very important not to let it fry, so put the oil on a slow fire.
When all the oil has completely blossomed, add flour and fry until golden brown. Do not overcook. Remove the pan from the stove, pour out quickly, but gently cold milk.
Stir vigorously, carefully breaking all the lumps of flour.
When the sauce is smooth, return it to the fire and salt it.
Boil for a minute after boiling. This time is usually enough for the sauce to thicken.
Muscat Bechamel Sauce
A no less popular recipe for bechamel sauce at home is prepared with the addition of ground nutmeg. The taste is subtle and very pleasant. Usually nutmeg bechamel is a part of lasagna.
Ingredients:
• fifty grams of butter;
• half a liter of milk;
• fifty grams of white flour;
• half a teaspoon of salt;
• a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg.
Cooking Method:
Put a piece of butter in a skillet with a thick bottom and drown until it is completely dissolved.
Pour the flour and fry, stirring constantly, for two minutes. Get a thick mass with a pleasant nutty flavor.
Pour in a thin stream of milk, while stirring the sauce with a ball. Try to immediately "punch" all the lumps, seeking to obtain a homogeneous mixture.
As soon as you get a thick base (about a third of the milk should remain), salt and immediately add ground nutmeg so that it gives off its flavor and disperses.
Pour in the remaining milk, again interfering with the cheesy sauce.
Simmer until thickening for about four to five minutes.
Onion Bechamel Sauce
An interesting variant of the sauce, which is prepared in milk and broth with the addition of onions. The sauce will be similar to the bechamel consistency, but its taste will be completely new, savory. Spices, specified in the recipe, do not need to be added.
Ingredients:
• one hundred grams of butter;
• one and a half glasses of milk;
• one and a half glasses of broth;
• half a small onion;
• a third cup of flour;
• half a teaspoon of salt;
• black or red pepper, bay leaf (to taste).
Cooking Method:
In a saucepan combine meat broth and milk, put on medium heat. Onion bulb cut very finely and throw in the pan.
If you decide to cook the sauce with spices, add immediately and bay leaf.
Wait for the liquid base to boil, boil the onions for about three minutes, remove from the stove. Gravy should stand fifteen minutes.
In a dry frying pan, dissolve the sweet butter, chopped into pieces.
Throw in a measured portion of flour, fry, stirring constantly with a spoon. Flour should get a nice golden hue.
Strain the milk with the broth to get rid of the onion cubes.
Pour the fragrant milk mixture into the pan, immediately begin to stir the sauce.
When the flour and milk boil, pepper and add salt to taste.
Boil the sauce for about twenty minutes, then strain gently so that there is not a single lump.
Béchamel “Meat” sauce
Unusual sauce with pieces of veal, which can be replaced with another meat, is not only very tasty, but also very nourishing. This bechamel sauce at home can go to any meat dish or baked cauliflower.
Ingredients:
• sixty grams of butter;
• liter of milk;
• seventy grams of flour;
• half a small onion;
• seventy grams of boiled meat;
• salt to taste (approximately one teaspoon);
• pinch of thyme;
• one third teaspoon of nutmeg;
• pinch of red pepper.
Cooking Method:
Chop the onion very finely.
Just finely try to cut the meat.
Dissolve the butter in a deep frying pan.
Throw flour and begin to fry, do not forget to stir the mass.
Pour the milk into the sauce, immediately breaking the brewing flour.
Add onions, spices, salt and cook sauce, stirring constantly and waiting until it thickens.
At this point, add pieces of meat to the sauce, boil for another five minutes and turn off the heat.
Beeshamel Cheese Sauce
This variant of bechamel sauce has no competitors at home. Cheese in gravy is already delicious. And when butter, nutmeg and white pepper is added to it, it turns out to be something quite incredible to taste. Real pleasure. Be sure to try. Ingredients:
• seventy grams of butter;
• two hundred grams of semi-hard cheese;
• three tablespoons of flour;
• half a liter of milk;
• half a teaspoon of salt;
• one third teaspoon of white pepper;
• half a teaspoon of nutmeg.
Cooking Method:
Cheese grate on a fine grater.
Cut the butter into cubes and dissolve in a thick-bottomed stewpot.
Make sure that the oil does not fry, that is, it does not acquire an unpleasant sharp smell and does not become dark.
Pour all the flour into butter, add nutmeg.
Rub the flour in the butter for two minutes. When frying, make sure that the mass is not burnt.
In a skillet, without removing from the heat, pour the milk parts. It is necessary to ensure that the flour dispersed in milk, not gathering into lumps. Rub and crush them to add the next batch of milk to a uniform base.
When the last milk leaves in the sauce, boil until thickening.
As soon as the sauce begins to thicken, pour out the cheese crumb and stir. The cheese should be completely melted.
Salt, season with white pepper.
Bechamel is a wonderful cheese sauce at home is ready.
“Mushroom” bechamel sauce
Another unusual version of bechamel - with the addition of mushrooms. It turns out a deliciously fragrant thick gravy with a wonderful rich taste and unusual texture. This sauce can be served literally to everything: meat, pasta, boiled or baked vegetables, and even fish.
Ingredients:
• three hundred grams of forest mushrooms or fresh champignons;
• one hundred grams of butter;
• medium bulb;
• a third cup of flour;
• three glasses of milk;
• two tolovye spoons of chopped fresh dill (optional);
• salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking Method:
Wash the mushrooms, dry on a paper napkin and cut into small cubes.
Chop the onion.
Dissolve the butter in a deep frying pan and toss the mushrooms with the onions.
Fry the mushroom cubes to a blush, cover and stew until tender. After five minutes, salt, season with pepper.
Pour flour into the mushroom roast while stirring, and heat all three minutes.
In the resulting fragrant mass pour glasses of milk, breaking all the lumps. Do not pour the next batch of milk until flour has gone.
Cover the sauce and simmer on low heat for fifteen minutes.
Five minutes before cooking, add the dill.
Serve the sauce to fish, pasta, meat or potatoes.
Bechamel Sauce at Home - Tricks and Tips
The most important thing in the bechamel sauce is the absence of unpleasant flour lumps. You can, of course, just strain the mass. But it is much easier to beat it with a blender or mixer.
If the sauce is too thin, do not add flour to it. It will ruin the taste. just cover the sauce with a lid and simmer when boiling slowly until the mass is thickening. This is sure to happen, and the taste will not be oversaturated with flour.
To make the bechamel sauce at home more fragrant, to give it a piquant touch, you can put a bud of cloves in the milk or a onion cut into quarters. After half an hour, when the milk absorbs the aroma, you can begin to prepare the gravy.
If the sauce turned out too much, you need to send it to the fridge. But flour can give an unpleasant crust on the surface, which will have to be removed and thrown away. To avoid this, pour bechamel with a small amount of melted butter. Subsequently, simply mix this oil layer with the main sauce when you heat it.
