Welcome to The Culinary Professional Recipe Collection.
White Sauce (Béchamel)
Category: Sauces, mother sauces
Equipment: Saucepan, spoon, large saucepot, whisk, chinois
No. Servings: 64
Serving Size: 2 fl. oz. (60 mL)
Yield: 1 gal. (3.8 L)
Ingredients
8 fl. oz.
clarified butter
8 oz.
all-purpose flour
1 ea.
small onion, peeled
2 ea.
whole cloves
1 ea.
dried bay leaf
1 gal.
* milk
pinch
nutmeg, grated
to taste
salt
to taste
white pepper
Method
1
Prepare a white roux: A. Melt clarified butter in a small pan. B. Add flour and cook over low heat for 5–10 minutes or until the raw flour taste is cooked out of the roux. Stir the roux so the color does not deepen. C. Remove roux from pan and let cool.
2
Prepare an onion piqué by spearing the bay leaf to the onion with the two cloves.
3
Add onion piqué to milk and bring to a boil.
4
Remove onion piqué and reserve.
5
Add the cool roux to the milk and stir with whisk to dissolve the roux.
6
Add the onion piqué back to the sauce.
7
Bring sauce back to a boil, reduce heat to very low and simmer for 20–30 minutes. Stir often so that sauce does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. (A heavy bottomed pot will lessen the chance that the sauce will burn.)
8
Remove onion piqué and strain sauce through a chinois. Season with nutmeg. If the sauce is not being turned into a derivative sauce, add salt and white pepper to taste.
9
**Cover the surface of the sauce with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Cool below 70°F (21°C) in two hours or less, and below 41°F (5°C) in less than a total of six hours.