White sauce

This is a component of the lasagne I cooked later on this evening. I thought I would separate them because white sauce is an important thing to know how to cook. You can add extra ingredients to it to make different sauces without too much trouble, and it is great on its own with vegetables like cauliflower or with corned beef.

You need but three ingredients: 60g butter, 60g flour, and 500ml of milk. Heat up the milk in the microwave or on the stove until it is just short of boiling. Melt the butter in a large pot (you'll need room to stir). Make sure it is bigger than this one. I had to switch pots later. Once melted, turn the heat down a bit and add the flower. Stir it in completely. It will turn into a dough that looks a little oily and shiny. Now you have to cook it for around 3 minutes or so over low heat. Stir it constantly to avoid burning it. Once it starts going, you'll get a nice biscuity smell out of it.

Once the three minutes are up, and the mixture ("roux") has become a little powdery and is starting to whiten, add your milk. Do it little by little, and stir it in each time before adding more. Do this over a very low heat. As you add more milk, the roux will thicken and thicken and thicken, until eventually you are left with a nice, creamy white sauce. You can refrigerate it happily, though a skin will form on top which you can peel off. You might find you need to add a bit more milk to thin it, depending on how you want to use it, and heat it up if you have put it in the refrigerator.

Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries in the middle of the process but you get the idea. Just make sure that a) you don't burn the roux; b) you heat the milk up; and c) you add it slowly and stir it right in each time. You'll be fine.

To make some other sauces, you can add parmesan or cheddar to make a nice cheese sauce, add peppercorns or cracked pepper to make a nice pepper sauce (add this before you start adding milk, and cook it a while with all the milk in it). You can also make bechamel sauce by cooking in the milk a peeled onion with cloves stuck all over it. You'd have to do this on the stove.