Cheese Sauce – Liquid Comfort
Pretty much everything tastes better with cheese sauce. And some of the most famous comfort foods around the world incorporate cheese sauce as part of their appeal. Think mac and cheese, or France’s croque monsieur. Imagine a creamy lasagne or crunchy toasted nachos smothered in liquid cheese yumminess. What about the cheesy, gooey, dippy goodness of an authentic Swiss fondue?
Cheese sauce can be used to flavour up vegetables to make them so much more appealing for kids – smothered over broccoli or cauliflower who can resist? Put simply, the addition of cheese sauce creates a culinary transformation that changes a meal from ho-hum to outstanding. Creamy and velvety, with that sharp tang of the right blend of cheeses, it goes great with baked potatoes, on open toasted sandwiches, on roasted vegetables or even drizzled over your eggs for breakfast.
Of course, your Mum probably used to make white sauce when you were a kid and may have added some cheddar cheese from time to time in order to jazz it up a bit. It’s true that anyone can easily pull together a homemade cheese sauce at home. But how many times have you started to add milk to your flour roux, lost concentration and ended up with lumpy mess before you’ve even started adding the grated cheese? Or what if you’ve mistimed the whole cooking event and prepared a lovely cheese sauce but everything else is cold? Or what about when you’re just plain exhausted and you want to get into your pyjamas and produce some gourmet comfort as quickly as possible before settling into your favourite rom-com?
Let’s face it, home made food is great and home-made cheese sauce can be amazing. But with amazing prepared products like Anita’s Cheese Sauce on the market, there’s no shame in speeding up the comfort process by heading to the fridge and opening a packet of good quality cheese sauce made by someone else, especially to make it easier for you!
And there’s no reason not to personalise it a bit to make it feel like you’ve done your home-cooking additions. Cheese sauce goes so well with nearly anything that, even if it’s out of a packet, you can make it better by adding some bacon or some sliced jalapeños and Mexican spices, a splash of white wine or kirsch or some finely diced gherkins.
Coming into footy finals season, think about a selection of corn chips, meatballs, grilled chicken strips and baked potato quarters to dip into a big bowl of cheese sauce. It’s bound to complement your favourite beverage and have everyone raving about your catering.
Melted cheese is one of the greatest comfort foods. But liquid, velvety, tasty cheese sauce which can be drizzled and spread over just about any savoury food to lift it out of the doldrums, takes culinary comfort to another level.
