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White sauce, bechamel sauce, shown dripping off a spoon into a pan

Classic sauce recipes · French recipes

Classic white (or béchamel) sauce

Making a white sauce – or roux as the French call it, occurs so much in everyday cooking. Master this easy recipe and you’ll massively boost your overall cooking confidence.

Serves6
Hands-on30 min
Oven10 min
DifficultyEasy

Method

  1. Put the onion, bay leaf, peppercorns and parsley stalks into a heavy-based saucepan. Pour in milk and bring just to the boil, then remove from the heat and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes. Strain into a jug.

  2. Meanwhile, put butter (or margarine) into a separate, clean, heavy-based saucepan. Let it melt over a medium heat, then add flour. Using a wooden spoon, stir continuously and very well until you have a smooth, slightly grainy paste. This is called a roux.

  3. Off the heat, whisk a little of the infused milk into the roux, beating well with the wooden spoon, then return to the heat, beating, until thickened. Repeat until half the milk is incorporated, then switch to a whisk. Continue adding the milk (off the heat) and whisking over the heat until smooth.

  4. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking the sauce for 4-5 minutes, until thickened, stirring occasionally. Taste, season, and make sure there is no hint of flour.

Quick wins, tips & make ahead

To make parsley sauce, the rule of thumb is to make sure the parsley is very fresh, as it really does make all the difference to the finished sauce. My preference is for flatleaf but you can certainly use curly parsley. Chop a good handful – somewhere between roughly and finely chopped – and add to the finished sauce.

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