Turn Béchamel Into A Cream Sauce With Virtually No Effort

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Béchamel is a quintessential staple of French cooking, belonging to the foundational French mother sauces along with tomato, velouté, espagnole, and hollandaise. It's a simple three-ingredient sauce that starts with a white roux of flour and butter to which milk is added and stirred over medium heat until thick and creamy. Just as béchamel pairs with many different dishes, its versatility also extends to ingredient swaps. And the one ingredient that can turn bechamel into a cream-based sauce is, well, cream!

It takes no effort to transform béchamel into cream sauce by simply swapping a percentage of the milk with cream. The ratio of milk to cream is a matter of personal preference; the more cream you swap for milk, the richer and thicker your cream sauce will be. Recipes range from a 50:50 ratio of milk and cream to a full swap of milk for cream.

You can start the béchamel recipe with the buttery roux, adding the milk and cream once the butter and flour combine and become fragrant. The trick is to stir continuously over medium to medium-low heat, making sure the mixture doesn't get too hot. Since overcooking the standard béchamel sauce will result in a potential cement-like substance, a béchamel sauce that's part heavy cream is especially at risk. The minute the béchamel reaches your desired thickness, remove it from the heat and incorporate it into your planned dish as soon as possible.

Just as this extra-creamy béchamel can be added to a list of cream-based sauces you should know, it can also be the base of many other sauces. For example, as well as swapping cream for milk, you can also stir in fresh parmesan and grated gruyere to make Mornay sauce. A creamy béchamel would also be a major upgrade to Soubise sauce, made by combining béchamel with pureed caramelized onions.

Another great way to impart a burst of flavor to an ultra thick and rich béchamel cream sauce is with tinned fish like anchovies or sardines. Blend a tin of anchovies, like this Cento olive-oil packed tin of anchovies, and stir into a béchamel cream sauce before serving it over a bowl of fettuccine for a sauce that's bursting with umami. Make a mustard cream sauce by adding a few tablespoons of dijon mustard (this Grey Poupon dijon mustard from Amazon is ideal) along with the cream and milk. Amp up the spice of the mustard with nutmeg and cayenne for a spicy and decadent sauce to pour over this recipe for wiener schnitzel. Or for a quick and delicious tomato cream sauce, blend a creamy béchamel sauce with this recipe for tomato confit or a can of flavorful roasted tomatoes, like these 365 Whole Foods Organic fire-roasted tomatoes. You could pour the sauce over roasted cauliflower steaks for a show-stopping vegetarian centerpiece.