There is a particular kind of convenience food that most of you have probably seen in your frozen food section. A plastic bag filled with vegetables, pasta (or sometime potatoes), and chunks of meat (usually chicken) and a pouch with a creamy sauce. You are instructed to put the whole mess in a frying pan, and when the sauce packet thaws out it makes a nice tasty coating for the other ingredients. It’s easy to make, fairly tasty, and makes you feel like you’re eating a bit more healthy than some box of over-processed meat.

This is good and all, but a lot of people don’t realize just how easy it is to make a quick sauce yourself! There are an endless number of recipes you can adapt it to, and it can easily turn into one of your most valuable tricks.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1 tablespoon of flour
  • 1 tablespoon of butter (optional, see below)

And that’s it! Simple huh?

Method:

You want to use cold milk, and this is very important. Otherwise the flour will cook in lumps that are basically mini-dumplings and no amount of whisking will get them out. Just put the milk in a bowl with the flour and whisk together, then add to your dish. That’s it. You don’t necessarily need to add butter to it, but you’ll want some kind of fat to help with the texture. If you’ve already got bacon or some other kind of fat in the dish that you can just rely on that instead. Then cook on a medium heat till it’s the thickness that you want.

Now, keep in mind that this is a base, meaning that it’s not going to taste all that great on it’s own, the idea here is that you add things to it depending on your dish to get the flavor you want. Here’s some examples:

  • Add two or three tablespoons of salted butter and you’ve got an awesome butter sauce.
  • Add a half cup of shredded cheese and you’ve got a cheese sauce you can pour on brocolli or nachos.
  • Make the cheese sauce and double it, add elbows and you’ve got mac ‘n cheese.
  • Add it to rice to make a creamy rice side dish.
  • Add it to sauted mushrooms and onions and pour it over a steak.
  • Add cheese and mashed potatoes and you’ll get a cheesy potato soup.
  • Double it and add sour cream, sauted mushrooms and onions, and cooked ground beef and you’ve got stroganoff.
  • Double it and pour it in a skillet that you’ve just cooked ground sausage in and you’ve got sausage gravy.

This sauce is basically what the French would call a bechamel sauce, though my methods listed above are slightly different than how a traditional bechamel would be cooked.

Now, go experiment with it!