This recipe is fast and foolproof!

My first job here in Berkeley was managing the Mel’s Drive-In restaurant downtown. Mel’s Drive-In restaurants are long gone, but the name may sound familiar. A Mels’ Drive-In was featured in the movie American Graffiti, which launched the careers of many famous actors. After Mel’s went bankrupt, another company bought the name and now has Mel’s restaurants in several Bay Area cities, including Berkeley. I learned how to make cheese sauce when I was managing another restaurant in Berkeley, The Station.

Cheese sauce is used in a lot of popular dishes: macaroni & cheese, nachos, potatoes au gratin, etc.; however, most people never make cheese sauce because they don’t think they are up to it. Most cheese sauce recipes start off by making you make a roux, and making roux is tricky. If you don’t cook the flour in your roux long enough, your sauce will be lumpy and pasty. It you cook your roux too long, it will burn, and roux burns very easily. This recipe contains no roux.

The secret to foolproof cheese sauce without roux is Wondra flour. Wondra flour is sold at all supermarkets in the baking section. Wondra looks like regular wheat flour, but it is different. Wondra is precooked flour. That means that when you use Wondra in a sauce, you don’t have to make a roux. You just put everything in the pot and heat it up. To make a professional, restaurant quality cheese sauce, put all the following ingredients in a small pot:

1 cup cold whole milk

2 tablespoons Wondra flour

2 tablespoons butter

dash of salt and pepper

Heat the mixture to a boil over a medium flame, stirring constantly. When it comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 1 minute, stirring continuously. Turn off the heat and add:

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard powder

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Stir it up. The residual heat in the mixture will melt the cheese. When the cheese is melted, you’re done! That’s all there is too it.