White sauce (for lasagne) Qs and recipes

Nicki

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

There is a flour made by Carr's called Sauce Flour (Delia used this in her how to cook series). It was developed to not need any fat, you can get it at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Oops. I used a recipie from the internet the other day which called for sauce flour, and assumed this was just an american name for cornflour, which is what I used! Worked perfectly though.

The easiest way, I think, to make a proper roux based sauce is in microwave. You melt butter, then stir in flour and cook on high for 2 mins, then pour in all milk at once, and cook on high for three minutes, whisking it after every minute. Always works well with no lumps in sight. Use exactly the same proportions of flour butter and milk as with traditional stove top method.

Rachie_B

ive just added sauce flour to my tesco shop !

snoozer

I have convinced my OH that anything that can be lumpy (sauce, custard etc) will be lumpy if I make it:whistle: :shhh:
That way he makes them and saves me the job:T :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Mirtos

2 tblsp butter. Melt in saucepan. Stir in flour until it forms a paste. With pan on a low heat, SLOWLY, add 1 pint of milk, bit by bit, stirring until mixture is smooth before adding more. Sauce will thicken as you go. Add ground nutmeg and 2 oz parmesan or other strong cheese. Stir well. Remove from heat and keep stirring until mixture is of uniform consistency. Lovely Jubbly. Pour on lasagne!

whistler-alison

I just use cornflour and milk and melt the cheese in at the end. The white sauce recipe is on the back of the cornflour tub. Probably not so tasty for white sauce on its own, but fine with the cheese in it.

Swan_2

years & years ago I saw Delia do the fat-free white sauce, but at that time she just used ordinary plain white flour for it. I wonder what the difference in the sauce flour is?
I've been making my sauces that way ever since & it works really well as long as you whisk while the mixture's heating up

Kelinik

I've always just made a basic white sauce for lasagne, no need for cheese except grated over the finished dish to give a nice melted cheesey top

rosy

I never have cheese sauce in lasagne either- just white sauce with nutmeg grated on it and a grating of parmesan on the top.

For white sauce though, if you have the time it's definitely worth infusing the milk first ( put milk in pan with end bits from carrots, celery, half an onion with a few cloves stuck in, a couple of bayleafs and some black peppercorns and heat gently till the milk starts to bubble. Remove from heat and leave to cool. When cool strain the veg etc and use the cool milk to make your sauce). It sounds a guddle but you can really really taste the difference.

Also when I do this I always use my biggest pan and make up at least 4 pints of white sauce at a time and freeze what I don't need for another time when I am extremely grateful that I have white sauce for no more effort than lifting it out of the freezer! ( It's very versatile as well, can use it for any white sauce dish, eg throw in a bag of prawns and peas and have with pasta, or cooked chicken and grapes to go with rice, or add cheese for a very quick macaroni cheese - if you've made the sauce already these dishes only take the ten minutes that it takes to cook the pasta/rice).

savingstill

2 oz butter &2 oz plain flour gently heated in pot on cooker ring & at same time slowly blend in 1 pint milk. When it starts to thicken add 6 oz grated cheese (I use mature cheddar), use whisk if needed to even out any lumps. Always make sauce first and leave to sit while doing mince part, it will get thicker. Just before putting dish in the oven sprinkle on more grated cheese.
We had lasange tonight so this thread caught my eye!

fallen121

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

There is a flour made by Carr's called Sauce Flour (Delia used this in her how to cook series). It was developed to not need any fat, you can get it at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Bought some in Tesco Dunfermline this morning. Here's the weird thing. When to the bit where the flour is, I was looking for the Carr Sauce flour but I couldn't get to it because there was already a guy there intently reading the back of a packet of......Carr's Sauce Flour!! Looked like he was buying it for the first time also. I was sooooooo tempted to ask if he had read about it on here, but timid little mouse that I am I said nothing..........!!

Here's the next strange thing. Quite a big shelf space allocated to this stuff (four packets wide) - but only 3 packets left!!

Finally, as I was paying for the stuff the checkout assistant picked up the packet and asked me what it was and what you could do with it.

Bizarre....never even knew this stuff existed and suddenly the whole world's interested!!