Simple yet perfect cheese sauce! Tip to avoid 'gritty' sauce: You have to go old school and shred cheese from a block. Packaged shredded cheese is coated with flour to prevent shreds from sticking together, and this will make the sauce slightly gritty.
This is the cheese sauce I learned to make in Home Ec. class years ago. Once you learn how to make the white sauce, you can add many things to it for home cooking. Some things I've learned over the years: 1. you need to cook the flour and butter for a bit so the sauce doesn't have a raw flour taste 2. you have to keep the heat very low, or turn it off, when you add the shredded cheese or it will clump up and separate; once the cheese has been added, do not use high heat 3.you need to shred your cheese from a block of cheese, anything that is pre-shredded has added flour to keep the shredded cheese separate. It will make your cheese sauce gritty.
I add different things to the basic sauce to give it different flavors - garlic when melting the butter, or Worcestershire sauce for more flavor, sometimes different mustards. This is good on any vegetable or potato. By changing the type of cheese, you get many different sauces.
Great recipe! Thanks Samantha for sharing.
outstanding. I doubled it, followed it exact. poured it over penne with some chicken pieces and broccoli. AWESOME Sauce...almost alfredo like, but better...added some garlic as well for a bit of flavor. will use this all the time now
I used the recipe to make a Cheddar Potato Bake. I tripled the recipe, boiled 5 lbs potato cut into bite size pieces until almost done. Drained the potato and stirred in enough cheese sauce and some left over bacon crumbled then poured into a buttered 9x13 pan. Baked for about 30 minutes, sprinkled some bread crumbs over top return to oven till browned.
Very easy and quick to make and even though I'm one of the lucky moms who's kids WILL eat their broccoli without a cheese sauce, I tend to not like it too much, so it helps me! LOL I made this once with old cheddar and it was MUCH better than with medium, so if you're going to make it stick to old or extra old cheddar. Thanks for this recipe! I'm sure I'll use it often :)
Delicious! Was looking to make broccoli more appealing and came across this. I used corn starch for flour and organic half and half for milk. I also added some minced garlic and onion powder. I used shredded cheddar cheese and it worked out perfectly, no need to use block cheese as others have suggested. Sauce was smooth with no lumps. The key is the temperature through the steps of the recipe - not block cheese versus pre shredded in the bag. Make sure to turn temperature down when cheese is added and stir continuously. Good, basic recipe that everyone should know.
Absolutely delicious cheese sauce instead of shredded cheddar I used velveta cause I couldn't find my hand shredder. Came out perfect and smooth. I did change it from 2 cups milk to one cup heavy cream and 1 cup milk was heaven. My honey and son put it even on their pork chops...lol -wakswpnthr41
Perfect! and delicious. Just what I was looking for to pour over broccoli for something different. I used a mix of Gouda and American (because that's what I had) and I'm sure you can use just about any cheese you like. Thanks webbsk for sharing.
