cheese sauce

[ronnieblue]

i used to be able to make it no problem but it now turns watery
is it because i'm using skimmed milk?
or am i just hopeless?
foolproof method please

[KenR]

Tried it once with skimmed milk and light marge. Didn't work properly at all.. total disaster in fact!
Semi skimmed works OK though... you could try it with lite marge I suppose as opposed to butter, but for the extra tiny bit the butter adds to the cheese sauce (bear in mind it is only about 25g of butter in total) I don't feel it is worth the risk. If you do feel you need to avoid the extra fat from the butter just ditch a few spoonfuls of the finished sauce. Proportionally gram for gram you may have higher fat, but with less sauce you will have the same quantity of fat overall if you hadn't used butter.

[Donquixote]

How do you make your cheese sauce?
If you're using a roux bechamel and adding cheese, using skimmed milk won't really affect it, as it's the flour that thickens the sauce.
Try this...

425ml milk
1 bay leaf
5 whole black peppercorns
1 slice onion, 1/4 inch (5 mm) thick
40g butter
20g plain flour

Heat the milk in a pan, along with the peppercorns, bay and onion. Bring to the near-boil, then turn down the heat.
Melt the butter in a separate pan, then add the flour and beat to remove any lumps. Slowly add the milk a little at a time, beating til smooth after each addition.
Add whatever cheese you're using at the end, and perhaps a little english mustard too.

You won't have any problems with it being watery if you do it this way.

Good luck!!!

[elephant1234]

warm 1 pt of milk and a blob of butter , mix corn flower and cold milk about 4 teaspoons to make a thin paste add this to the warmed milk and stir well ,you can keep adding corn flower paste until you have the right consistency you want then add some english mustard, whack in loads of cheese. bob`s your uncle.As i find sauce made with flour too heavy this is ideal and foolproof.

[Theoldsilver]

Bisto make cheese sauce granules - perfect every time. Delicious added to creamy mashed potato!