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Big Batch French Béchamel Sauce

Ingredients

  • 200 g butter
  • 200 g flour
  • 2 l full fat milk
  • salt and pepper to taste

For a Moussaka Béchamel custard

  • 2 ex l eggs
  • grated whole nutmeg or a pinch to taste
  • 200 g Grated cheddar

Instructions

  • In a large saucepan add the butter and
  • let it melt
  • Add the flour and mix together to ensure no lumps form
  • Add the milk and mix together
  • continue to whisk to ensure no lumps form
  • As the milk heats up the sauce will start to thicken. Check the seasoning. You are done when the sauce is thick and velvety and there is no taste of flour.

For a Moussaka Béchamel custard

  • Once the sauce has thickened, whisk the eggs in a separate bowl, add a few tbls of the heated béchamel sauce to the beaten egg, whisking all the time to ensure the eggs don't turn into scrambled eggs. This is known as tempering the eggs and prevents the entire batch of sauce turning into scrambled eggs.
  • grate in your desired amount of whole nutmeg, I do about 10 scrapes and taste.
  • Add cheese of your choice for the cheesy option. Check the seasoning and adjust to your liking
  • Pour into ziplock bags and freeze until ready to use.

Notes

Tips
For added flavour and if time allows, infuse the milk with an 1 x onion, 5 peppercorns and whole mace. Mace tastes like nutmeg so this is perfect for a moussaka. 
If you want a brown sauce, stir the butter and flour together until they turn brown, then add the milk.  A béchamel sauce is known as a blonde sauce and the milk is added when the butter and flour are light and blonde in colour. 
Don't stress if your sauce gets lumpy and you have a stick blender at hand.  As long as the flour is properly cooked out of the sauce, you can blitz the lumps away in no time at all.
To stop a skin from forming on top of the sauce, push a piece of baking paper down onto the sauce. Remove when ready to use and use a spatula to scrape off the excess sauce  from the paper. 
If the skin does form just blitz with a stick blender to get rid of the lumps.  
This sauce freezes well.  When you do defrost it, it may separate a bit, use a whisk to bring it back together again and make it smooth.