
For a bechamel, stop right here and take the pan off the heat before it starts to turn brown. It wil first turn creamy looking, then start to look a little grainy - this means that the flour granules have absorbed the butter. Add the flour, and stir around vigorously. Melt the butter over a medium-high heat in a heavy-bottom pan. If you want a stiffer sauce, say for making cream croquettes, you would use more roux. So, if you want 4 cups of sauce, you'll use 4 Tbs + 8 Tbs, and so on. It's also the basis for Sauce Mornay, otherwise known as plain old cheese sauce. If you want to be even more precise, you want 1 weight unit of butter to 1 weight unit of flour (say, 10 grams - 10 grams), but I find that the 1 Tbs - 2 Tbs ratio works fine and is much easier to measure.ġ Tbs butter + 2 Tbs flour will thicken 1 cup of liquid, to produce a sauce of the consistency that is perfect to use as a pouring sauce, and for making lasagna and gratin dishes. You will want 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter to 2 tablespoons of plain white flour.
How much bechamel for a pound of mac how to#
If you have never mastered bechamel, here is how to get it perfect every time. It's a flavored milk sauce thickened with roux. One of the best known, and much maligned, roux-based sauces is a bechamel - otherwise known as "white sauce". The two basic things to remember: cook the flour enough in the butter/oil so that it loses its floury flavor, and only add hot liquid to it. It's not - as a matter of fact, I find the buerre blanc method to be a lot easier to screw up (ending up in a oily, separated mess). So a properly cooked roux is going to thicken without being obstrusive. Also, if a roux is undercooked, you will get a floury flavor. Any times you apply a sauce too heavily, regardless of the way it was thickened or not, you're going to mask the natural flavors. If a roux is prepared correctly, it won't destroy any flavors.

The most commonly used oil is butter, clarified or not.

It is used for anything from gravy, stews, soups and various sauces. Roux is basically a mixture of flour and oil, which are brought together to become a thickening agent for liquids. Roux is a basic that every cook should know about, but for various reasons it's rather shrouded in myth. I have two articles on the back burner at the moment, and both of them use roux.
