Béchamel Sauce | Chefs At Heart

• Béchamel is not as tricky to make as people think…
• Recipe Insights | In Brief
• Recipe Process Overview | In Brief
• Recipe Process Overview | In Detail
• Technical Tips
• Recipe Nutrition Facts | Per Serving

Béchamel is not as tricky to make as people think…

Some people do tend to believe that making béchamel sauce is tricky/a chore and do use the ready made from a box. Please do try to make your own. The difference in the flavour is significant.

What is béchamel?

It’s a white sauce creamy in texture, that depending on it’s consistency, can be used as a pasta sauce i.e. in mac & cheese or as a topper in other pasta recipes such as lasagna and pasticcio.

Alternative names to béchamel are béchamel sauce or white sauce.

The basic ingredients of the classic béchamel sauce are butter, flour and milk. Some other extra can be added in to enhance the flavour such as

• spices like nutmeg
• cheese like philadelphia cheese or parmesan
• eggs that other than flavour can add some warmth to the pale original colour of the sauce

However, the classic béchamel can be tweaked in various ways to become

• skinnier/lighter – see Technical Tips below
• gluten free by substituting wheat flour with cornflour
• dairy free by substituting butter with olive oil and cows milk with plant based milk

Recipe Insights | In Brief

Item	Info
Cost	AED ~15.34 | GBP ~3.27 | EUR ~3.53 | USD ~4.18 for the amount of the ingredients required by the recipe AED ~49.85 | GBP ~10.61 | EUR ~11.46 | USD ~13.59 if assumed that new packages will be bought for the recipe and that some part of it will remain unused i.e. 1kg of flour will be bought but 5 TBS are needed
Difficulty	easy
Makes	1 tray of lasagna/pasticcio = 8 generous portions or 12 smaller portions or somewhere between 8 -12
Life Span	up to the next day in the fridge if covered in cling film
Ingredients	can see variations – see different versions of the recipe, where any

Recipe Process Overview | In Brief

Recipe Process Overview | In Detail

Technical Tips

• Other than béchamel being one of the major ingredients of the flavour as well as the creamy texture, its also one of the major ingredients that drive the calories up; its expected as its made with flour, milk and butter. Béchamel contributes to almost 15% of the calories in our Turkey & Spinach Lasagna for example, which is a fair chunk of the calories but also of the flavour.

• In this béchamel recipe and some others, the highest driver of the calories, is milk. Therefore, by using an alternative to milk or a combination of milks or liquids i.e. water, one can deduct some to lots of calories while maintaining the yummy flavour.

Béchamel Ingredients	Calories
5 cups of semi skimmed milk	575
25 gr of butter	182
5 TBS flour	160
2 eggs	118
some grated parmesan	21
some breadcrumbs	n/a

Milk Insights	Calories
5 cups of semi skimmed cows milk	575
5 cups of soya milk	488
5 cups of oat milk	438
3 cups of semi skimmed cows milk + 2 cups water	345
5 cups of coconut milk	250

Recipe Nutrition Facts | Per Serving