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Easy cheese sauce
Cauliflower and cheese sauce probably doesn’t bring back the best of childhood memories, even if the cauliflower was fresh out of the garden with crisp flowerets. When the cauliflower was cooked till very soft and doused in a cheese sauce, sometimes lumpy, it wasn’t the most appetizing vegetable dish.
Likewise leeks or turnips with white sauce!
However a smooth creamy cheese sauce can enhance other foods or as a major component of lasagna. The art of making it from fresh individual ingredients instead of out of a packet is actually quite easy.
It is based on the following white sauce recipe and it doesn’t take very long to make.
You do need to concentrate all the time though. Don’t go off and leave the sauce to cook on its own. I can promise you it will go lumpy if not watched and stirred constantly till it thickens.
White sauce (the basis for Cheese Sauce – see Variations below)
Ingredients
2 tbsp butter or margarine
2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup of milk
¼ tsp salt
Method
1. Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan.
2. Add the flour and salt and stir until it is bubbly.
3. Add one-third of the milk and stir all the time until the sauce boils and thickens
4. Repeat this twice until all the milk is added.
5. If you keep stirring the sauce constantly until it boils, you should get a smooth creamy sauce
Variations
To make a cheese sauce, add ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese after you have taken the saucepan off the heat. This is important because if you keep cooking the sauce after you add the cheese, the sauce will become tough and stringy.
If you want a particularly tangy sauce use tasty or well matured cheese.
To make a larger quantity, simply double the amount of all the ingredients. It pays to annotate the recipe with the new doubled amounts as it is so easy to double some and not all the ingredients – and this can have a devastating effect on the end result!
A cheese sauce for lasagna needs to be a bit thicker so it doesn’t run everywhere when you serve it, and I suggest you use 3 tbsp butter or margarine and 3 tbsp flour to 1 cup milk.
If you end up with a lumpy sauce, or if your sauce has curdled, you can either beat it with an egg beater or you can put it into a sieve and stir it over a bowl until the smooth sauce falls into the bowl. (You might want to do this out of sight of guests or even the family!)
you for got the cheese in your ingredients
Sorry to confuse you. The basic recipe is for white sauce that you can use to make cheese sauce. The amount of cheese to use and when to add it is in the Variations at the end of the recipe
I did concentrate which I think was the most important ingredient
Thank you the result was excellent
OMG now i haz mac n cheese thankums x_X omnomnom
that was excellent, tastes good. thank you, this made my day perfect flavour.
Love this recipe
Awsome
Great as a base, hard to get wrong, and the perfect portion size for a couple! Thanks!
for a long time I did not know how to get this sauce but thanks to you I follow the direction and bingo there it was just as I wanted it to be. Now I am cooking.
WOW! This is amazing!!!! and sooo easy too. thanks for this great recipe
I love cheese sauce! It’s my favorite. Thanks for the recipe!
How can we make lasagne for two, when one does not like garlic and onion.
Hi Steve
We’ve done some thinking about your query about how to make lasagne for two, when one does not like garlic and onion.
Our thoughts are:
1 Cook the meat mixture without garlic or onion. While the meat is cooking, cook the onion and garlic separately. When the meat mixture is cooked, divide it into two portions and add the onion and garlic to one portion.
2 Either make the lasagne in two separate dishes, or use one dish and carefully put the onion and garlic meat mixture into one part of the dish. You could keep it separate with a piece of aluminium foil.
Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on.
Judy
I just made the cheesy sauce for a lasagna and it barely made it into the oven! I was eating it off a spoon! Perfect ratios and easy instructions thanks!
I need to make 1 pint of cheese sauce (THICK) – using this method I simply don’t don’t know how much of each ingredient to use. Please advise
Hi Denis
To make 1 pint you need to double the recipe shown here. So that will be:
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups milk
½ tsp salt.
You make it extra thick, add an additional tablespoon of flour.
If necessary, you can add more flour after you’ve made the sauce (before you’ve added the cheese) by mixing the flour and a little milk in a cup until the mixture is smooth.
Then add it to the saucepan and stir well till the sauce is bubbling again.
Hi Judy,
Thanks for that, I will try it in a few days time – much appreciated.
The Cheese Sauce Was BEAUTIFUL a very lovely recipe:)
World’s worst cook here. And this was EASY!!! Thank you! I added lots of pepper and a pinch of cayenne pepper coz I like it spicey! Was fantastic.
When making a sauce for lasagne, how much cheese do u need. I need to make enough sauce for a lasagne for 6. Wot do u recommend?
Hi Elaine. I suggest for a start that you check out our Easy Lasagne recipe. This recipe serves 4. To serve 6 people I would recommend you double the amount (to allow for seconds). If you prefer to use your own recipe then compare the amounts in your recipe with this Easy Lasagne recipe and work out whether you need to double the mixture or not.
I wouldn’t be keen to add too much extra cheese to the cheese sauce for lasagne as you might upset the proportion of fat to flour and milk and end up with a runny sauce because there is too much fat. In our Easy Lasagne recipe I have suggested adding an extra tablespoon of flour to the cheese sauce to make it thicker so it doesn’t run everywhere when you serve the lasagne.
If you want a more cheesy flavour for your lasagne use tasty cheddar cheese and maybe an extra 1/4 cup of cheese. However if you are using a lasagne recipe for the first time I suggest you stick closely to the recipe and leave modifying it until next time.
Awesome 1st time making cheese sauce from scratch and your recipe worked a treat thanks so much