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Traditionally, onions are slowly braised in butter before being drained, puréed and added to a pre-prepared Bechamel sauce to make Soubise sauce.

This seems a terrible waste of flavour, if you were to make the Bechamel last of all with the onion-flavoured butter, would this be too overpowering and would it ruin the final sauce?

(I'm assuming here that any water added to the butter during the braising/poaching process would not effect the thickening of the milk/cream and would have evaporated off).

Greybeard
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1 Answers1

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I don't know specifically about using the butter to make soubise, but you can certainly make a bechamel sauce from the butter used in the frying. I have done so many times - usually for use in a pasta based dishes such as "Mac and cheese".

The onion flavour is present, but not too strong and seems to be mostly retained in the onions themselves.

The water that boils out of the onions (and butter) has evaporated by the time the fat from the butter reaches the boiling point of the fat. As you can make bechamel from things like olive oil, the water content of the butter and/or onions isn't a huge consideration in the process anyway, unless you are removing the onions before they caramelize and are still losing water. At this point you could simply let the water boil off before adding the flour.

bob1
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