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Cheese sauce

The white sauce, five minutes further on

Easy10 min hands-on · 15 min totalServes 2
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A pan of thick, golden cheese sauce with a wooden spoon lifted out of it, trailing a ribbon back down.

Doubles in a wider pan. Keeps three days in the fridge. Freeze flat in a bag and reheat gently, stirring, since a cheese sauce can split if it goes from freezer to full heat too quickly.

Cheese sauce is white sauce with somewhere to go, and the only real skill is not rushing the last step. Take the pan off the heat before the Cheddar goes in, so it melts into silk rather than turning stringy. A pinch of mustard powder disappears into the sauce and makes the cheese taste more of itself, with no heat you would notice. This is the sauce under a macaroni cheese, over cauliflower, or through a bake with breadcrumbs on top, and it freezes just as well as its plainer cousin.

Suits after surgery, a narrowed bowel, chemotherapy diarrhoea, a new stoma, after a low anterior resection

Tags Batch-friendly · Freezes well · Vegetarian · Easily fortified

Ingredients

Contains: Milk, Gluten, Mustard

  • 30 gunsalted butter
  • 30 gplain white flour
  • 400 mlwhole milk
  • 100 gCheddar, grated
  • 1 pinchmustard powder — optional
  • salt

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a small, heavy-based pan over a low heat, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring, until it smells faintly biscuity rather than raw.

  2. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the milk a splash at a time, working out any lumps, then return to a low to medium heat and cook, whisking often, for 4 to 5 minutes, until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

  3. Take the pan off the heat again and stir in the Cheddar and the mustard powder if you are using it, a handful at a time, until it has melted completely into the sauce. Season with salt.

Watch-points

  • Make the sauce with plain white flour. Wholemeal and seeded blends are off the list in this book.
  • Take the pan off the heat before the cheese goes in, and stir it through gradually, so it melts smoothly rather than turning stringy.

Make it more nourishing

  • Use 130 g of Cheddar instead of 100, which adds about 125 kcal and 8 g of protein to the pan.
  • Stir 2 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder into the cold milk before it goes into the roux, for around 8 g more protein and 85 kcal.
  • Beat an egg yolk into the sauce off the heat, then set the pan back over a low heat for a minute so the yolk cooks through. That is about 55 kcal and 3 g of protein, and a deeper colour.

Swaps

Instead of Cheddar, use Gruyère or another mature hard cheese
melts just as smoothly and gives a nuttier flavour
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