Bechamel Sauce Not Tasty & Thick Enough for Lasagne

[irridium]

What can I do to make it nice and creamy tasting? I use roux and hot FF milk gradually poured in and it's usually too bland and thin. How do I get it to the same creamy yumminess that you see in restaurants? I've had to resort to buying a jar of white sauce and added in two tubs of soft cheese and mixed in with cooked tomatoes and leeks to make taste of something.

One proper heaped tablespoon of BUTTER, one of flour to a pint of milk. Cook it well and slowly add warm milk, whisking all the time. You'll need about 2 pints for a large lasagne.

You don't need to precook the lasagne sheets, they cook in the liquid from the bechamel and the meat ragu, as long as you keep it at the equivalent of Gas 4, which I think is about 160 in the Ninja (not Air Crisp setting), as it needs to cook gently and the compact size means it's already a much drier heat than a 55l oven.

If you need to brown the top (of course you do), wait until the end, add the cheese and then Air Crisp for five Minutes.

Oil vs butter isn't the reason it's not thickening, though it may not taste as nice. And because of the water content, butter is lower fat than oil per gram. I've made a sauce before where spices are bloomed in oil, flour added to make a roux, then stock added and thickened to correct consistency. With fat + flour, addition of liquid, the sauce should thicken eventually.

OP you say you need to add lots of milk to counteract large amounts of roux. Could you be adding so much, that the amount you need to cook the roux for before thickening is a huge amount of time. Surely it must be thick when you start adding the milk, so what happens if you add less?

40g Butter
40g Plain Flour
3 cups FF milk
1 teaspoon Dijon
1 teaspoon wholegrain
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

I like to do 60g of Gruyere but any sort of mild hard cheese would be good.

I use the recipe from here (the original edition, not the revised). This is a great cookbook for lots of recipes.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11572436

Infuse the milk? With bay, onion and peppercorns before hand? And obviously use butter

If the béchamel is too thin, then just add a little cornflour mixed with a little milk.

Also I don't really understand what you mean by not thick enough, but then you are adding more milk because you have too much roux? That's a bit contradictory

Oil in a roux for white sauce is genuinely offensive 😂
You just need a good amount of butter, a good amount of flour, and not too much milk. The more milk you add the thinner it’ll be, so if you want it thicker then add less

I use the recipe in Delia's lasagne al forno.

www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/italian-recipes/lasagne-al-forno?amp

I definitely agree, I think your main problem is the oil OP😂

Cook the roux for longer than you think.
And no lasagne sheets need parboiling any more.
You only really need to add salt, pepper and nutmeg to the bechamel, and it doesn't matter if it's not think as traditionally, you mix it with the meat sauce between the pasta layers.

Possibly making too much roux and having to use a pint of milk to make it to a sauce consistency, but I don't really know how thick it should be so I tend to put too much flour to the oil. I'll follow 1:1: pt. milk ratio and see how I fare on that. Yes, I shall stop using oil and use butter instead (though difficult to eyeball tbsp of that).

BTW. I forgot to mention, I use lots of very mature Cheddar in it too.

When it comes to using dried lasagne sheets, they don't come out soft after a good hour in the oven. Now I have a Ninja, I've worked out that it's better with pre-cooked sheets (such a pain to parboil one by one) and Bake it on 170C (or thereabouts) and Airfry at the end to crisp/brown the cheese on top.

I use about a litre of milk but I don't measure either the butter or flour tbh.

Aldi jar of white sauce for lasagne, about 50p. Life’s too short (and with all the other good stuff going on in the ragu, trust me it’s fine)

I make it with oil and semi skimmed milk, no problem, first put the oil (generously cover the bottom of the frying pan), add very finely chopped onion and cook until soft and transparent (cover, stir and not let them turn brown or crispy) then add flour, mix well, then cold milk and some grated nutmeg, cook stirring until it thickens, takes a while, stinks to me (the cooked off milk) but it’s delicious. I don’t measure anything, it it’s too runny I just cook longer until milk evaporates to my taste, if too thick I add milk. I tend not to add flour once milk is in but I guess it’s possible too. That’s how my mum taught me and it’s very simple!
For the sheets I just buy ones that say no pre cooking needed but I soak them in cold water. Sometimes they stick, it’s a faff really.
Now lasagna reminds me of the Why Mummy books lol

Use this BBC recipe www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/white-sauce
One thing they are good at

To make a good roux, it's butter and flour in equal amounts then add 10x the number for butter and milk in milk ml to make the white sauce. (Oil does not make a good roux! It needs to be proper butter, not spreads or oils).

Eg: Butter 50g, flour 50g, milk 500ml.

For making more (or less) white sauce, increase/decrease as required. 40, 40 and 400. 80, 80 and 800. etc.

You need a smallish, heavy bottomed saucepan so it doesn't burn. A low heat. Cook the flour and butter together for a few minutes. It looks odd because it looks like only a little bit of dried floury butter in the pan, but keep just stirring The butter and flour need to actually cook in the pan before milk is added so don't skip this step. Don't let it burn on the bottom. (I think the main thing in making white sauce is continuous stirring at all stages!)

Ideally you'd warm the milk in another pan as that will make for a smoother sauce. Pour the milk a little at a time (I probably pour it in three goes) and keep whisking, whisking, whisking. Once all the milk is in, it will slowly start to thicken all by itself after a while.
Add grated cheese in at the end for béchamel, or if you were making white sauce for a Christmas pudding, you'd add sugar to sweeten it (plus brandy if required).

Switched to ricotta based white sauce recently. Loads of recipes available. Ricotta egg parmesan whisked in a bowl. Simplifies the whole lasagna making process. Is lighter and doesn't compromise flavour or involve a damn saucepan that u have to clean. Honestly the cleaning of a pot after bechamel is a total bore.

Definitely use butter not oil. Infuse the milk beforehand. Traditionally no cornflour in a roux based sauce - as has been said, you whisk in small blobs of beurre manié.

After being taught to make a roux and having to do it the traditional way at school, I rarely bother now - instead putting the flour, butter and infused milk in a pan and whisk until the sauce is thick and the flour cooked out. That works really well, but isn't one for the purists!

Definitely start off with butter (real, salted, butter) then make sure you use plenty of seasoning and if you like it cheesy I prefer to use grated parmesan to get that really cheesy flavour but without the stringiness you can get if you use say a cheddar. Nutmeg is good too, or english mustard but absolutely use butter as your base.

Forgot to add, here are the proportions for different thicknesses of sauce

You do not make a roux with oil! Ughhh

You use butter and flour in equal ratio, and heat gently as the flour has to cook a bit, add hog milk, salt pepper and nutmeg and a bay leaf, and simmer for at least 10 minutes (otherwise you just taste the flour)

Honestly..., oil?!

Once you've made it, let it cool slightly then add one or two egg yolks.

Thanks to all of you lot for replying with your suggestions. I shall be making this tomorrow so hopefully I get it right this time. As my Ninja is a 7.5l pot I'll have to double the amount of sauce. I do allow the roux to cook out so that it doesn't taste floury and then I add the milk gradually, maybe in three intervals or so, and then whisk and whisk so I get a good consistency. I've not done dried sheets before in the Ninja, so shall trial that. Someone upthread said I should let the dish sit for a while before baking it, that way the sheets will have absorbed the liquid from the sauced layers. What do you lot think to this idea? My first attempt of making it in the Ninja turned out successfully - it baked it for 60mins and 15mins on Airfry at 200C to brown the cheese topping (with precooked sheets.)

I do make the bolognese in the Ninja first - with good ingredients like grass fed beef 20% fat, mire poix, garlic, bay, bit of cinnamon, cumin. thyme and oregano and red wine if I have it in, and good quality tinned toms. Pressure cooked for 40 mins. This I can make, no probs in this area!

I make slow cooker lasagne with cold ragù, uncooked lasagne sheets and a mix of ricotta and grated cheese instead of béchamel sauce. Not as fatty as “real” lasagne, but just as tasty.