Mac + Cheese Please!

What do sausage gravy, baked macaroni and cheese, and creamy casserole all have in common? Bechamel sauce! Welcome to day number two of our ‘saucesome’ tour of the 5 mother sauces! 

So - we learned the basics of roux yesterday (check out last post if you missed it!) and we’ll need that technique to make bechamel, but we’ll use milk instead of stock. This sauce is not tricky, but it can burn easily - we’re going for blonde here peeps! Standard ratio for classic béchamel is 3 ounces fat (coconut oil, butter) to 3 ounces of all-purpose flour - to thicken with 1 quart of milk - but you can always use less milk depending on what you’re making. If we’re getting technical, many recipes incorporate nutmeg, I’ve always left this out.

Endless uses for this sauce..but the fan favorite is macaroni and cheese (obviously). I’m a huge fan of Homeroom Mac + Cheese in Oakland, CA (@home) and chose to share their method in my video as a way to use the sauce! Not sure if the recipe is on the DL, but Chowhound hooks it up find the link here!

Fun other options:

-chowda!

-gratin, of literally anything

-lasagna

-add sausage and make a gravy

-upgrade your croque monsieur 

What other ways do you use béchamel sauce?