Classic white (or béchamel) sauce
- Published: 30 Apr 05
- Updated: 18 Mar 24
Making a classic white sauce – or béchamel as the French call it, occurs so much in everyday cooking, for example in a lasagne or moussaka. Master this easy recipe and you’ll massively boost your overall cooking confidence. See FAQs on this page for more information about béchamel and its ‘mother sauce’ status.
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Serves 6 -
Ready in 40 minutes
FAQs
What is a white béchamel sauce used for?
Making a classic white sauce - or béchamel as the French call it, occurs so much in everyday cooking, for example in a lasagne or moussaka, macaroni cheese or a croque monsieur..
What is a béchamel sauce?
Béchamel is what's known as a 'mother sauce' - one of five great French sauces. Think of a mother sauce as one of the building blocks of classic French cuisine — a sauce used to make other sauces, like mornay (when cheese is added to béchamel)..
delicious. tips
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.