Bechamel is a delicate white sauce that can be called a universal dressing. It goes well with meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms and even boiled vegetables. European chefs often use bechamel sauce as a part of various dishes, and also separately serve it on the table in sauce-boats. Our housewives mainly use bechamel sauce for lasagna.

To get the sauce the correct consistency, without impurities and with a pleasant aroma, the main thing is to follow the procedure.

Classic Lasagna Sauce Recipe

Structure:

  • milk - 0.5 l;
  • butter - 100 g;
  • wheat flour - 2 tbsp. l .;
  • salt - 0.5 tsp.

Instead of milk, you can use cream.

Cooking:

  1. Put milk on the stove and bring it almost to a boil, but do not boil! This moment can be determined by the white pair, which began to rise from the surface. Salt.
  2. In a container with a thick bottom over low heat, melt the butter.
  3. Sift flour into it and, while stirring, wait for a golden color and a nutty flavor. From this point on, stirring should be continuous until the end of cooking. The temperature is maintained at the same level.
  4. Pour milk slowly and gently into the butter.
  5. After about 7-10 minutes, the mass will begin to thicken. Follow the process, and when the first "gurgle" rises from the bottom, turn it off. The sauce is ready - you can pour lasagna.

If you want to step back a little from the classics and hear a French touch in the sauce, try making bechamel with the addition of Provencal herbs. Herbs can be picked up independently. Sage, rosemary, mint, oregano, thyme, marjoram, basil and lavender - this is a standard set, but you can buy a ready-made dry mixture.

Provencal herbs dressing

Take:

  • milk 3.2% - 2 cups;
  • butter from 72% and above - 2 tbsp. l .;
  • premium wheat flour - 2 tbsp. l .;
  • salt - 0.5 tsp;
  • Provencal herbs - 0.5 tsp

 

Let's start:

  1. Bring the milk to a boil. Add salt and herbs.
  2. We put the pan on a slow fire. Melt the butter, pour in the flour and mix with a wooden spatula so as not to burn.
  3. After 2-3 minutes, we begin to slowly pour in the milk. At the same time, we don’t stop stirring, then we get a homogeneous mass without lumps.
  4. Bring the sauce to a boil and immediately remove from the stove.

Cheese can help diversify white lasagna sauce. Parmesan cheese is better suited to the recipe, but it can be replaced with any hard variety of good quality - bechamel sauce will not suffer from this.

French cheese sauce

Ingredients:

  • fat milk - 500 ml;
  • natural butter - 50 g;
  • sifted wheat flour - 50 g;
  • cheese - 100 g;
  • salt - 0.5 tsp;
  • ground white pepper - 0.25 tsp.

Cooking:

  1. Bring milk to a boil, but do not boil.
  2. Grate the cheese (if parmesan is on the shallow side, other varieties use larger holes).
  3. On a small fire, melt the butter in a saucepan, pour the flour and fry it for several minutes.
  4. With constant stirring, add a little milk. Then salt, pepper and cheese.
  5. Cook until boiling.

Some housewives cannot imagine a white bechamel sauce without the addition of nutmeg. Its delicate sweet-spicy aroma cannot be replaced with other spices. Nutmeg is laid at the end of the heat treatment.

Nutmeg variant

Take:

  • Cow's milk - 700 ml;
  • butter - 100 g;
  • flour - 3 tbsp. l .;
  • salt - 5 g;
  • bay leaf - 1 piece;
  • ground black pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Let's start cooking:

  1. Bring the milk to a boil. Add salt, bay leaf, pepper. Set aside.
  2. Next, in a frying pan at a small temperature on the stove, melt the butter, pour flour into it. Fry until creamy.
  3. Pour a little milk into the butter (before that, remove the bay leaf), stirring the composition all the time. Before the end of the process, sprinkle with nutmeg. How to boil - the sauce is ready.

If lumps have formed during cooking, punch the mass with a blender or strain through a sieve.

Sometimes you want something more, then the taste and color of the sauce can then be supplemented, for example, with mushrooms.

Mushroom Bechamel for Lasagna

Product Composition:

  • high fat milk - 0.7 l;
  • high fat butter - 70 g;
  • flour - 70 g;
  • champignons or forest mushrooms - 100 g;
  • salt and ground black pepper to taste.

 

Cooking:

  1. Wash and finely chop the mushrooms.
  2. Preheat milk to 70 - 80 degrees.
  3. In a thick bottom cooker, melt the butter over low heat. In the same place, fry the flour to a light beige color.
  4. Pour hot milk in small portions into flour, do not forget to stir. This can be done with a whisk or a wooden spatula (most importantly quickly and constantly).
  5. When milk is poured in, add mushrooms. Salt, pepper and let them cook in the sauce for about 10 minutes. If the gifts of the forests are used, they should be boiled in advance and slightly cooled. After add to the mixture.

Bechamel mushroom is cooked with fried mushrooms. Add them to the main composition 2 minutes before readiness.

If bechamel is not to be used immediately, then lay a sheet of cling film close to its surface. This will help to avoid the appearance of a crust. So the sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

It is interesting:tartar sauce recipe

No other dressing can replace bechamel sauce in step-by-step preparation of lasagna. It is he who gives the dish tenderness, the necessary fat content and combines its internal structure. The advantage of the sauce is the ability to store it in frozen form. Even after a couple of months of storage in a freezer, it can be thawed in a water bath and successfully used as intended.

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