White Sauce

If there is anything that people have bugged me to post more than a red sauce recipe, it's one for a white sauce. White sauce is rich, creamy, and has a wonderful mild flavor that makes you feel like you're eating comfort food, even the first time you eat it.

This is a very basic white sauce, and allows you to make innumerable modifications, resulting in many different kinds of sauces. You can even use this sauce as a base for a wonderful clam chowder. There are two quick and easy ways to modify this sauce for very different results: modify the fat and modify the seasonings. Try using bacon grease instead of butter and adding in some crunchy, crumbled bacon bits. Or put in some steamed vegetables, like cauliflower, broccoli, yellow summer squash, and carrots to make a nice pasta primavera. I like it with a generous helping of white pepper. Try some Marsala wine, instead of white. There are lots of good possibilities. In the end, just experiment and see what you like. Let me know about your favorites. Good luck!

Ingredients:
1 yellow Onion, Finely minced
4 tbsp Butter (½ stick)
¼ cup Flour
2 cups Heavy Cream (room temperature or warmer)
1 cup Chicken Broth
½ cup White Wine
1 cup Parmesan Cheese

Directions:
1. Sauté the Onion in the Butter over medium until translucent but not browned.
2. When butter gets foamy, slowly add in Flour bit by bit, mixing rapidly all the while. The flour should absorb all of the butter and become almost past-like.
3. Cook the flour mixture while stirring for a minute or so. Be careful not to let the flour burn. Make sure to keep mixing.
4. Add in the Heavy Cream a little at a time. As soon as you add in a little liquid, the flour mixture will separate and look like lumps of flour in liquid. Keep stirring, though, until all of the liquid has been absorbed by the flour. Continue adding the cream bit by bit, repeating this procedure.
5. Add in the Chicken Broth, repeating the procedure in 4.
6. Add in the Wine.
7. Once all the liquid is added in, continue to stir constantly. As the sauce heats up, it will slowly thicken. Continue to heat it up and stir, until the sauce begins to boil. Once it begins to boil, it will get no thicker until it cools off.
8. Add in the Parmesan a bit at a time, and stir it in until it is melted and incorporated into the sauce.

Note: As you add in more and more of the liquid in steps 4, 5, and 6, the flour will continue to absorb it as you keep stirring. With each addition, the flour will get more and more loose as you stir in the liquid. At some point the mixture will be all liquid and look like an actual sauce, albeit a thick one. Once it is all liquid, add in the rest of the remaining liquid (Cream, Broth, and Wine) and slowly stir until it is smooth. If you've done it right, the only lumps you'll see in the sauce will be the onions.