Cheese sauce is one of the most versatile things that you can find in any kitchen, and the truth is that it’s one of the easiest possible things to make yourself. There’s no reason to buy store-bought cheese sauce when you can make something healthier and better at home – the reason that most people don’t is because they imagine it to be a long and complicated process when it really isn’t.
There are many ways to make a cheese sauce, but the easiest way to do this is by preparing a basic rouge – and then adding cheese as an ingredient to this. It’s not as hard as you might imagine once you’ve got the steps of the basic sauce down on paper – and once you do, play around with the recipe until you can find the consistency and flavor that works.
Here’s how to make your own homemade cheese sauce.
1. Basic Rouge: The Ingredients
The ingredients for the most basic type of rouge (which will eventually become the base for the more advanced type of cheese sauce) are pretty simple – and usually only uses three ingredients to make. First, butter; second, flour and third, milk.
Of course, these three ingredients can be adapted to your needs if you have any food intolerances or allergies. You can even substitute traditional wheat flour with cornflour if you’re gluten intolerant, and the recipe will still work just fine.
It’s the right combination of these ingredients in the right order that creates the basic rouge that you can later turn into cheese sauce, and in most cases the most common mistake people make with sauce is doing this in the wrong order – or entirely overcomplicating the ingredients that have to be used and adding things that aren’t necessary at all far too early on in the process.