Béchamel Sauce

Name: Béchamel Sauce
Cuisine: Pakistani
Ingredients: 1 kg whole milk; 50 grams clarified butter; 50 grams all-purpose flour; 1/4 medium onion, peeled; 6-7 whole cloves; Kosher salt, to taste; Ground white pepper, to taste; 1 pinch ground nutmeg

Zobia Sajjad @zobiasajjad

Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan

Béchamel is a basic white sauce and one of the five mother sauces of classical cuisine. It's traditional to use white pepper to season béchamel because some chefs prefer not to see specks of black pepper in a white sauce. But if you can't find white pepper and/or don't mind specks of pepper in your béchamel, you can use black.
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Zobia Sajjad @zobiasajjad

Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan

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Ingredients

1 kgwhole milk
50 gramsclarified butter
50 gramsall-purpose flour
1/4medium onion, peeled
6-7whole cloves
Kosher salt, to taste
Ground white pepper, to taste
1 pinchground nutmeg

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Steps

1

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, warm the milk over medium heat, stirring occasionally. You just want it to be warm (around 110 F), not hot, and certainly not boiling. Attach the bay leaf to the onion using the cloves and add them to the sauce.
2

Remove the sauce from the heat. You can retrieve the clove-stuck onion and bay leaf and discard them now. Carefully pour the sauce through a wire mesh strainer.
3

Meanwhile, in a separate heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. With a wooden spoon, stir the flour into the melted butter a little bit at a time, until it is fully incorporated into the butter, giving you a pale yellow-colored paste called a roux. Heat the roux for another minute or so to cook off the taste of raw flour. As with the milk, you don't want the roux to be too hot. It should be moderately warm but not cold, either.
4

Using a wire whisk, very slowly add the warm milk to the roux, whisking vigorously to make sure it's free of lumps. Season the sauce very lightly with salt and white pepper. Add a pinch of nutmeg.