Cheese sauce recipes and questions

tomstickland

I use the method from the book "first time cook".
Melt butter in a pan, then gradually add the flour to make a thick paste. After cooking that for a few minutes then add the milk, stirring. Then turn up the heat a bit and add the cheese, keep stirring as the cheese melts into the sauce.

Works really well IMO.

Thistle-down

Do you have a blender? If so, you can put everything into the blender and liquidise: 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour, 1/2 pint milk, 2 oz grated cheese

Pour into saucepan, heat until it comes to the boil stirring all the time, let boil for a minute then simmer for a few more minutes, still stirring.

I usually add some chicken or veg. stock powder and a tiny bit of mustard powder as well for a nicer flavour.

You can do all sort like this - onion sauce, custard, white sauce, etc. all really easy. I can post the recipes if anyone is interested.

lizzyb1812

Thistle-down that sounds fab (my new favourite word!) Thanks for posting that will definitely be trying that out

lizzyb

lil_me

I heat the butter (don't let it burn), then add the flour, then milk very gradually then the cheese

1oz butter, 1oz flour, 250ml milk, 4oz cheese

Multiply as required.

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/week5recipes.pdf#page=1

tomstickland

I'm a man who was kitchen shy about 6 months ago, and if I can do it properly so can anyone else. It's very satisfying making a proper sauce. I found buying a weighing scales sorted it for me (needed for pastry challenge a friend set me). I just weigh everything properly and then follow the recipe instructions.

Louisepp

Downsizing__for_sanity wrote:

Delia Smith has a no fail recipe - you just add the flour butter and milk all at once and whisk with a balloon whisk. Bring to the boil and add the cheese (grated). Sorry I can't give you quantities - I do it by eye now.

DFS

I always do it that way. Can't be messin' with making a roux. Turns out brilliantly. You do need to whisk away at the beginning as it starts to turn thick, usually bottom first.

Love the idea of putting it in the blender though. Never thought about that.

You can do all sort like this - onion sauce, custard, white sauce, etc. all really easy. I can post the recipes if anyone is interested.

Yes please. Especially the custard :T

tomstickland

Thing is though, I've found that mixing flour into molten butter and the adding the milk and then the cheese has worked for me every time. Anyway, whatever takes your fancy.

Louisepp

tomstickland wrote:

Thing is though, I've found that mixing flour into molten butter and the adding the milk and then the cheese has worked for me every time. Anyway, whatever takes your fancy.

Oh yes, it does work. I just find it a bit more fiddly. As you say...whatever takes your fancy

Pink.

Hi twinkle,

Welcome to MSE.

I make a cheats white sauce for lasagne as I've always been a bit hit and miss with the traditional method of making white sauce.

Heat some milk in a pan.
Mix a couple of teaspoons of cornflour with a little cold milk and add to the heated milk in the pan, stirring continuously with a whisk until thickened.
If it's not thick enough add a little more of the cornflour/cold milk mixture until it's the consistency you want.
Then add grated cheese, black pepper and some English mustard (which brings out the flavour of the cheese so that you don't need to use so much).

For more suggestions on making white sauce for lasagne, this older thread may help: Lasange white sauce

Pink

pboae

Cheese sauce is my nemesis! But I use pink-winged's method and it works 90% of the time. For some reason when I start with butter and flour it just all goes to pot. With cornflour and water it's just like making gravy, and even *I* can do that.