The simplest of white sauces consists of milk, cornflour and either salt and pepper or sweetening. After that, all sorts of goodies can be added, but let’s start from zero. The following recipe makes enough sauce to coat a lasagne, provide four servings of custard, and make a generous amount of Welsh rarebit for two.
- Put the cornflour into a small saucepan and add about a quarter of the milk.
- Blend until all the flour is mixed and a smooth thin paste results.
- Add the seasoning and then the rest of the milk. Mix again.
- Put the pan over a medium-high flame and stir the sauce constantly and fairly briskly until it starts to thicken. (You can tell that this is going to happen when it starts coating the side of the pan and the back of the spoon.)
- Still stirring, lower the heat and let the sauce boil.
- Once it’s boiling, continue cooking and stirring for one full minute and then remove the pan from the heat. This ensures that the starch is properly cooked. If it isn’t, it spoils the flavour of the sauce.
Notes
For best results, you need a first-rate saucepan. Too many stainless steel ones cook unevenly with the result that the sauce goes into lumps. If you have any doubts about your pan, use a flame-tamer and as low a heat as your patience will permit. Even with a whisk, once lumps have formed they’re almost impossible to remove. If using dried milk, add it as you mix in the cornflour, so that it dissolves when you heat the water.
This method guarantees you a smooth, cooked, white sauce. Proper cooks use white flour instead of cornflour, in many instances, saying that it gives a better appearance – a sauce made with cornflour has a sheen on it that you may not want. Food reformists object to using cornflour, because it’s super refined and has no nutrition apart from carbohydrate. If either of these are your view, you can use wheat flour instead, but it will need about ten minutes cooking and really should be blended with a knob of butter, over a low heat before you start, to reduce the floury taste. You do not need to stir continually, once it’s brought to the boil, but keep an eye on it in case it catches and burns. You need 2 tbsp plain flour for 1 tbsp of cornflour. And you might want to have white flour for this purpose, so that you don’t have brown bits in your white sauce. But white flour is not as nutritious as whole wheat. Sigh. Nothing’s ever easy.
Best alternative: However, in my opinion by far the best way of making a quick Béchamel sauce, which has more flavour than that made with conrflour, cooks more quickly than that made with wheat flour and looks more attratctive than either, is to use gram (chickpea) flour. This gives the sauce a delicate hint of yellow, which looks very attractive.
- Melt the butter or warm the oil in a small saucepan, over a medium heat. Mix in the gram flour and cook gently for a few minutes.
- Add about 1/4 cup of milk and blend carefully, ensuring that there are no lumps. Then add the rest of the milk and the onion powder and raise the heat slightly and bring to a slow boil. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Gram flour can sometimes go through a lumpy stage as it thickens: just keep on stirring untl it's smooth. It needs longer cooking longer than cornflour, but 5 minutes
after it's become smooth should be plenty. Taste it and see. Raw gram flour tastes unpleasant - you will easily taste if it needs more cooking. Adjust seasoning.
- The
first thing you can do to improve it is to add a large knob of
butter with the seasoning. Once you have your confidence, you can actually
melt this first and then stir the cornflour into it. A dollop of
olive oil also enriches it.
- If you have the patience, it’s well worth infusing the milk with flavourings. A tea infuser is useful for this: put a broken bay leaf, and a pinch of whatever herbs you fancy into the infuser and leave it for ten minutes or so in very hot milk. If you want something even better, a piece of onion, a garlic clove, a chunk of carrot, a couple of pieces of parsley, some mushroom stems, some broken cinnamon, a blade of mace – any or all of these can add a bit of character to a basic sauce. Put them in the cold milk and bring gradually to simmering point. Don’t boil or you’ll end up with a skin to deal with. Cover the milk while the flavours infuse, so that it stays warm longer. Be careful with mushrooms if you want a white white sauce, because they can colour it. Strain through a sieve before using. If you have any light-coloured vegetable stock, this is a good addition: mix it with dried milk.
- Cheese. Oh, lovely, wonderful cheese! I dare say you can buy really good vegan cheese in large, cosmpolitan cities. I have yet to find any, but as mentioned below, there is an acceptable alternative vegan sauce. A generous addition will turn this boring gloop into a delightful adjunct to your vegetables and make an instant meal with pasta. Choose a cheese with a pretty strong flavour and grate away. A quarter of a cup will add interest; half a cup is about the minimum to give it a definite flavour.
- Vegan cheese sauce can be made by substituting a couple of tbsp of nutritional yeast for the real thing. I’ll be honest, it won’t be as good, but it will still be a vast improvement on white sauce. However, if you go to the trouble of infusing the milk and then add 1/2 tsp lemon juice and 1/2 tsp dijon mustard, it will be much improved.
- Lemon juice. A tablespoon of this will add savour to your very basic sauce and complement carrots, for example. If you’re using a fresh lemon, add some of the rind, grated. This has much more oomph than the juice and adds a little colour. With the addition of honey, you will end up with a sweet sauce to go with puddings.
- Dried or mixed mustard, Worcestershire sauce, chilli: all these can be added to a standard white sauce to enhance the flavour, without substantially altering the texture. They will alter the colour, however.
- Green peppercorns, celery salt, dried minced garlic, and fresh or dried herbs will introduce a lot more character into the sauce, but will spoil the pure, unsullied whiteness, if this matters.
- If you add two, chopped, hard-boiled eggs, some chopped parsley and the rind and juice of half a lemon, pour it over cauliflower and sprinkle with a cup of breadcrumbs, fried in olive oil or butter, you end up with Cauliflower à la Polonaise. This turns the cauliflower into a main course and is great with deep-fried chunks of potato or Oven chips. Broccoli, courgettes, etc can be given the same treatment.
- A tablespoon or two of Dijon mustard makes for a very pleasant sauce with burgers.
- Fresh mushrooms fried in butter or olive oil, can be added to make a quick pasta sauce. Season with 1 tsp crushed green peppercorns, ½ tsp tarragon and/or dill (weed) and a clove of garlic. You could add a chopped onion and fry it with the mushroom, if you like. If you feel confident about making white sauce, the mushrooms can be fried in the saucepan and the cornflour added to that, to ensure that none of the delicious flavour is wasted. Use cream and you have a meal fit for a king!
- For a sweet sauce, omit salt and pepper and after the sauce is thickened, stir in a tbsp of honey and return to the heat. It can be further flavoured with vanilla essence, lemon juice or rind, orange juice or rind, rum, whisky, cocoa, coffee, etc. Brown sugar or treacle can be used instead of honey, for a different flavour – and colour.
- For extra richness, incorporate some cream. After the sauce has boiled, allow it to cool a little and then gently stir in the cream. If you need to reheat it, do so very gently so that it doesn’t boil, otherwise the cream may curdle.
- For custard, or lasagne, an egg, beaten in, adds extra richness. The easiest way to ensure that this doesn’t curdle, is to do the same as with cream. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more milk and heat it very carefully.