White Sauce

This is an extremely versatile recipe.  Use it to make a basic pasta with white sauce.  Add Parmesan cheese to the end product to make it taste a bit more along the lines of an Alfredo sauce.  Add shredded cheese to make a creamy macaroni sauce.  Use it as filler in pot pies.  Use it as a homemade cream soup base by adding the necessary ingredients--mushrooms for cream of mushroom soup, chicken bouillon for cream of chicken soup--or use it as is for potato soup.  On this particular day, I was wanting to make  pasta with white sauce.  Here is the recipe:

1/2 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 c. milk
pinch of nutmeg (optional; gives it a unique flavor for a change of pace)

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat.

Have your dry ingredients ready to go once the butter has completely melted.

Add the dry ingredients to the saucepan.

Stir until the flour is completely mixed in, then allow it to cook for about 4 minutes over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.

The mixture will begin to bubble as it cooks; cooking it for a few minutes lessens the taste of flour.

Have your milk measured out and ready to go.

After your flour mixture has cooked for about 4 minutes, go ahead and add the milk.

At first the sauce will be quite runny and will not coat the spoon.

Just continue to stir (frequently) over medium heat so that the flour doesn't settle and stick to the bottom of the pan, and you will soon notice it starting to thicken up.  The sauce will now form a smooth coating on the spoon.

Once the sauce has thickened to your liking, it's done!  (This would be the time where you would add the necessary cheeses if you wanted to make Alfredo or mac-n-cheese.)

In my case, I had my pasta cooked and drained, so I could just pour the white sauce in the pan with the noodles, mix the sauce in, and serve it up!

We often round this meal out with chicken and broccoli.