Roux/Bechamel/Mac-N-Cheese

I had a nasty review of one of my cookbooks that, among other things, told me that it's not a roux, it's a white sauce. I replied saying that I know that and that it's actually called a bechamel.

Heres the difference: To make a roux you mix together melted butter and flour. If you add milk it becomes a bechamel. I don't know why there's such a fancy difference but thats how it is in cooking. I kind of feel like making the roux is the most important part of making a 'bechamel' and that's why in my cookbooks I wrote to 'make a roux'. Not 'make a bechamel'. I do have the actual roux/bechamel recipe in the methods/basic/essential chapter depending on which cookbook you look at. I keep meaning to go through and make them one name or another but time has other demands.

To somewhat fix this error I went through and changed the words to say 'bechamel'.

Now that the fancy culinary stuff is out of the way, heres how to make one, whatever you want to call it.

Melt butter.

Add flour and whisk. It should become a paste. You can add more or less flour depending on how thick or thin you want the sauce to be. I like to use equal amounts of butter and flour.

This is where you stop if you're just making a roux. I sometimes make one for spaghetti to make the pasta sauce (always homemade) thicker and stick to the noodles better. But other than that I always use a roux for my 'bechamel'.

Whisk in milk. Seriously, whisk the entire time you're pouring in the milk and don't stop until it's good and mixed.

Pour in the seasonings. Here I have salt, pepper,, onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Then whisk it in.

Keep whisking frequently until it gets thick. How do you know? Well it'll be harder to run the whisk through. But other tells are that it'll bubble a but, and when you do run the whisk through it the lines will stay for a few seconds. Not long enough to capture on camera, but a little while.

So thats a bechamel. I'm sure there's another fancy name for this next addition, and honestly I've heard bechamel used for cheese sauce too so I really don't know. But if you just want the sauce, stop here.

Remove from heat and dump in the cheese. Here I'm using regular sharp cheddar. Normally I'd use the finely shredded but this was on sale and the finely shredded wasn't.

I whisk it in and it's still cheese, mixed into sauce. But I don't fret. Just leave it there for a minute or two while you do something else, like drain the noodles like I did.

After a few minutes when you whisk it again heres what you get. A perfectly smooth cheese sauce.

At this point I combine it with my elbow noodles and, in this case, a can of chicken.

You can leave it like that if you want and just serve it out of the pan. But if you have the time I highly suggest baking it. And if you do then I suggest a topping. Just mix together oil, preferably crushed crackers but in this case bread crumbs, and paprika.

Then toast it in a skillet. How do you know it's done? You'll smell toast!

This is about what it'll look like once it's out of the oven. Note: It's easier to spread the topping evenly when it's crackers. You can see here I didn't do a very good job with he bread crumbs.

How do you know when it's really done? Trust the bubbles.

I hope this has been helpful. If it seems intimidating trust me, it isn't hard. Melt butter, add flour, whisk in milk, add seasonings, thicken, add cheese, wait, stir, and it's done.