Sometimes in the winter you just need a good sauce you can batch cook and easily serve in different ways to your little ones. This one ticks the box for this and, not only that! It’s also really creamy, delicious and uses largely store cupboard ingredients. I can’t wait for you to try this, it’s definitely a warming meal I’ll be using throughout the winter with my two at home.
We’ve used Arla Big Milk in this recipe to add extra nutrients (A, C and Iron) to the dish, as part of a collaborative post I did with them on Instagram.
Cook time: 30 minutes
Serves a family of 4
Ingredients
- A drizzle olive or vegetable oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- 300g frozen veg mix (sweetcorn/peas/carrots)
- 100g tinned butter beans, drained
- 2 good handfuls of flat-leaf parsley
- 100g butter
- 100g plain flour
- 1 litre Arla Big Milk
Method
- Heat the oil in a large non-stick pan and soften the onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Add the frozen veg mix and heat through for 2 mins. Reserve half of the veg and set aside. In a food processor, blend the remaining veg mix with the butter beans and flat-leaf parsley.
- In the same pan, melt the butter over a medium-low heat then add the flour and stir together, cooking for 1-2 minutes until a paste, or roux, forms. Gradually add the Arla Big Milk to the roux a bit at a time, stirring as you go with a balloon whisk until the sauce thickens. It will take about 10-15 minutes to thicken so that it can coat the back of a wooden spoon – stir it frequently with your whisk during this time.
- Now stir in the blended and unblended veg mix. (If you’re offering to babies you can make a completely smooth sauce by blending all the cooked veg in step 1).
You can use your base bechamel sauce in one of 3 ways:
Veggie Pasta Bake
Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/gas mark 7. Stir the bechamel together with 500g wholegrain macaroni, cooked according to pack instructions. Pour into a shallow baking dish. Top with 65g grated cheddar and bake for 20 minutes until golden and bubbling.
Creamy Veggie Risotto
Add 500g precooked brown rice (or use two pouches). Warm through over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently until the sauce is slightly reduced and the rice is piping hot. Serve topped with a little grated cheese.
Prawn jacket potatoes
Bake 4 jacket potatoes. Whilst they’re cooking, make your bechamel sauce. In a separate frying pan, heat a drizzle of olive or vegetable oil and add a crushed clove of garlic. Once softened, add 200g frozen tiger prawns and cook for 5 minutes. Remove the garlicky prawns from the pan and chop up really well (slice lengthways and then chop into little pieces for babies and toddlers). Add to the bechamel, stir together then serve immediately on top of the jacket potatoes.
I hope you love this sauce recipe, make sure you tag me in any photo creating you make online #SRNutritionRecipes