Bechamel

Who are we? Ingredients! What do we want? To die for the
 greater good! What!? Screw that noise. I was thinking wifi.

Back when people were first discovering which dinosaurs were edible and which were jerks, they developed the "Mother Sauces," named after famed food pioneer Cornelius Mother, who stole most of his ideas from his crackpot father (Boldfaced lies. Probably.). The Bechamel is one of these mother sauces. It's sometimes called white sauce or cream sauce, but it's all the same. And it's awesome. It's rich and super adaptable, like Chamillionaire would be if the world was a more literal place.

Ingredients:

2 TBSP Butter

2 TBSP Flour

2 cups Whole Milk

An unspecified amount of salt

This is a pretty simple recipe, actually. Just kidding! You need to use French words, like “Bechamel” (Pronounced “Surrender”) and “Roux” (Pronounced “Surrender”). But seriously, it’s not so bad. The first thing you’ve got to do is make a “Roux,” and the first part of THAT is melting your butter over medium heat. I prefer cutting mine into small chunks first, both because it helps it melt quickly and evenly, and because I feel like I’m dissecting the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. 

Once your butter is good and melted, add the flour SLOWLY, while stirring like a crazy person who thinks that the only way to express love or find happiness is to stir butter and flour. Constantly. Extra points if you really get into character, and take prescription meds that don’t belong to you. This will help ensure a smooth Roux, with no extraneous lumps or credit problems. Add in a pinch of salt (If you have abnormally sized fingers, try to envision how much salt would be in a normal person’s pinch. Then put that much salt in), and then let the butter/flour glop cook for a couple minutes. Stir occasionally, to prevent both the mixture from burning, and you from ever regaining feeling in your arm. The official party line is to cook it until "it smells nutty," which is actually pretty accurate, despite sounding like directions you'd get from a ridiculous hippy. For those not smelling their goop, keep it going until it darkens to a light brown color.

And there you have it! A Roux! Which is commonly used to thicken soups and sauces, which is fortunate, since this is ostensibly a recipe for a sauce. To complete the sauce, crank up your heat all the way to medium-high, and get your milk ready. Pour it in to your pan of Roux goo, SLOWLY, again channeling the spirit of your homeless Vietnam veteran with the hook for a hand who stirs like a beast. Yes, I gave the fictional construct I created in order to tell you to stir a backstory. What of it?

I can't figure out why they call me white sauce. It's a mystery.

Let your milk, butter, and flour mixture heat up, stirring it occasionally until it thickens. You don't want it boiling, just well heated, thick, and creamy. Once you've got that going on, add "salt to taste." That's what recipes say when they have no clue how much goddamn salt you're gonna need, because  everybody's taste buds are different, and also maybe you suck at measuring. Here's what you do, taste the sauce, add a little less salt than you think it needs, stir it, taste it again, and repeat until it tastes good to you. Or Until you run out of salt. Or sauce.