What do you mean by chalky, exactly? Your proportions sound right (though I usually do two cups of milk with 2 tbs each of flour/butter, but that's for macaroni and cheese, which needs a lot of sauce, so that may not be relevant).
Melt the butter, then let the flour cook in the butter for a minute or two before you add the milk (this does something chemical to the flour, I forget what). S-vamp is right, you have to let the sauce thicken before you add the cheese. You also need to whisk vigorously when you first add the milk, so that it doesn't get lumpy, until it starts to thicken. The milk should be almost-but-not-quite boiling when you add it. (If it boils, it's not a disaster, but it forms a nasty skin.)
Honestly, it's hard to ruin cheese sauce. I've used cheap shredded cheddar (Costco's best!), and it works fine. If you want to practice the sauce without the potato variable (I personally always seem to over-cook or under-cook fried potatoes), I can send you my mother's killer recipe for macaroni and cheese. If you can make the sauce work for mac-and-cheese, it should be fine for cheesy potatoes.
(PS YAY for cooking experiments! One of the reasons I'm a poor cook is that I tend to give up after the first failure, when really you need to try several times until you get it right. Cheese sauce and mashed potatoes are two of the few things I'm confident I can do right.)
Melt the butter, then let the flour cook in the butter for a minute or two before you add the milk (this does something chemical to the flour, I forget what). S-vamp is right, you have to let the sauce thicken before you add the cheese. You also need to whisk vigorously when you first add the milk, so that it doesn't get lumpy, until it starts to thicken. The milk should be almost-but-not-quite boiling when you add it. (If it boils, it's not a disaster, but it forms a nasty skin.)
Honestly, it's hard to ruin cheese sauce. I've used cheap shredded cheddar (Costco's best!), and it works fine. If you want to practice the sauce without the potato variable (I personally always seem to over-cook or under-cook fried potatoes), I can send you my mother's killer recipe for macaroni and cheese. If you can make the sauce work for mac-and-cheese, it should be fine for cheesy potatoes.
(PS YAY for cooking experiments! One of the reasons I'm a poor cook is that I tend to give up after the first failure, when really you need to try several times until you get it right. Cheese sauce and mashed potatoes are two of the few things I'm confident I can do right.)
Reply
Leave a comment