please help a non-cook!!!

[scanmom]

I found a recipe on allears.net for breakfast potato casserole that looks yummy and easy (that is key... I cook very little)!! But one of the ingredients is be'chamel sauce..... and I have never heard of it!! What is it and where would I get it? I live in a small-medium sized town, and it's kind of hard to find unusual items... like I still cannot find Plugra butter for the fettucine alfredo at Alfredo's !
If anyone can help... I would really appreciate it! I really want to try this recipe!!!! TIA!!!!!

 

[mbb]

A bechamel sauce is just a "white sauce"...butter, flour milk and a little seasoning.
.."Béchamel sauce (pronounced [be.ʃa.'mɛl] or [beɪ.ʃə.'mel]), also known as white sauce, is a basic sauce that is used as the base for other sauces, such as Mornay sauce, which is Béchamel and cheese. This basic sauce, one of the mother sauces of French cuisine, is usually made today by whisking scalded milk gradually into a white flour-butter roux, though it can also be made by whisking a kneaded flour-butter beurre manié into scalded milk. The thickness of the final sauce depends on the proportions of milk and flour."

A low fat version, which I use as a base for cheese sauce:
Put 1/4 cup flour into a pot.
Turn the heat to medium high.
Add some salt and pepper.
A teaspoon salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper, or thereabouts
Whisk in 2 cups of milk.
Keep stirring.
Mixture will thicken as it heats.

For a cheese sauce (which would be yum on the casserole) you can grate 2-3cups of your fav cheddar, and add that in gradually. You don't want to dump all the cheese in at once, because that would lower the heat of the white sauce, and you'd have a lumpy cheesey mess

HTH, and have fun!

 

[jonestavern]

If you feel you're not up to making a bechamel from scratch, why not get a good packaged product like the one Knorr puts out?

They also make it in packets, usually where you find other gravy & sauce mixes in the grocery store.

When making a bechamel for a cheese sauce I also like to add in a pinch or so of powdered mustard.

Jean

 

[MazdaUK]

If you do add cheese make sure you take the pan off the heat or it will go stringy - as mbb said don't add it all at once or it will lower the heat. But add a fistful at a time and it should be fine

Delia smith (deliaonline) has an easy all-in-one method if you want to keep control over salt quanitites etc. which are more difficult to manage with a bought product.