This fabulous creamy homemade cheese sauce is one of the quickest, easiest sauces to make. It’s perfect for dipping broccoli and other veggies or drizzling over baked potatoes, nachos, or french fries.
You’ll be so glad to have this little recipe in your back pocket because it’s so useful and versatile.
Need a quick lunch? Steam some broccoli in the microwave and top with cheese sauce. Nachos for dinner? Cheese sauce. Baked potato feeling a little sad? CHEESE SAUCE IT.
If you have a couple of minutes and some cheddar cheese, you could probably make this sauce right this second.
Ingredients
- Butter: The base of this cheese sauce is a roux made with butter and flour. You can use salted or unsalted butter for this recipe.
- All-purpose flour: Using equal parts (by volume) of flour to butter helps thicken the cheese sauce.
- Milk: You can use any percentage milk you’d like in this recipe, but the higher fat the milk, the smoother and creamier your sauce will be.
- Cheddar cheese: Be sure to use full-fat cheese and start with a block of cheese that you shred yourself. The anti-caking additives in bagged, pre-shredded cheese can make your sauce lumpy. I prefer to use sharp cheddar, but mild to extra sharp will all work.
How to Make Cheese Sauce
- You start with a roux made by melting the butter in a small pot and whisking in the flour until you get a lightly golden paste. Cooking the flour with butter first cooks the raw flour taste out of the mixture.
- Then slowly pour in the milk, being careful to whisk out any lumps as they form, and stir until you have a nice bubbly, creamy sauce.
- Once the sauce is thickened, turn off the heat and stir in the cheese a handful at a time. Add salt, pepper, and optional cayenne to taste, and voilà. Perfect cheese sauce ready to tasty up whatever you’re going to pour it over.
Sauce Variations
While I love a good cheddar cheese sauce, this recipe is endlessly customizable. Here are some recommendations:
- Switch up the cheese: Any good melting cheese will work in this recipe. Give monterey jack, gouda, gruyere, or asiago cheese a try.
- Make it spicy: Use pepper jack cheese and/or stir in extra cayenne pepper to taste for an extra spicy kick.
FAQ
What to serve with cheese sauce?
The answer to this is: whatever you want!! If you can dream of drizzling cheese sauce over it, you can do it. But here are my recommendations to get you started:
- Vegetables, especially broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts
- Baked potatoes with homemade chili
- Homemade pretzels
- FRENCH FRIES!
(If you’d like to make this cheese sauce for fries, go check out my Cheese Fries post, which has instructions for making homemade fries to go along with the cheese sauce.)
How do you make a smooth cheese sauce?
To get the smoothest cheese sauce possible, follow these golden rules:
- Use full-fat cheese that you grate yourself as bagged cheese has additives that can prevent it from melting smoothly.
- Let the shredded cheese sit at room temperature for a short time so you’re not putting cold cheese into hot liquid.
- Remove the sauce from heat before you stir in the cheese. Overheated cheese can clump.
Why does my sauce taste floury?
If your sauce tastes like flour, it’s probably because the roux was not cooked long enough before adding the milk. Next time, cook the butter and flour mixture until it begins to turn golden. This cooks out that raw flour taste.
Can I store this?
Sauce can be stored in the refrigerator and reheated gently on the stove or in the microwave, but it is best eaten right after cooking. It won’t be quite as smooth and creamy after refrigeration and reheating.
More Cheesy Recipes
A Note on Serving Size
As written, this recipe makes about 1 cup of cheese sauce, which generously serves 2. To change the recipe yield, in the recipe card below, hover over the number of servings (or click if you are on mobile) and slide the slider. Add a couple of minutes to the cooking time when doubling or tripling.
Easy Homemade Cheese Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon (14g) butter
- 1 tablespoon (8g) all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup milk any percentage
- 3/4 cup (3oz) shredded Cheddar cheese
- Pinch of cayenne to taste
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- In a small pot, over medium heat, melt butter. Whisk in flour and cook, whisking continuously, until flour is lightly golden, about 1 minute.
- Slowly pour in milk, whisking out any lumps as they form. Continue to whisk the mixture until it is thick and bubbly, 3 to 4 minutes.
- Remove from heat, stir in the cheese a handful at a time until all the cheese has been used and sauce is smooth and creamy. Add cayenne, salt, and pepper to taste.
- Serve immediately and enjoy!
Notes
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission if you make a purchase using them. There is absolutely no additional cost to you.
This post was originally published on 1/24/18. It was updated on 10/4/20 with additional information and tips.
Karissa says
Amazing!
I used almond milk and it still turned out great.
Best cheese sauce recipe I’ve tried.
Anthony says
This recipe was perfect for our meal Didn’t have cheddar so used tasty cheese instead, also added some dry parmeson cheese at the end Thanks, it was delicious!
Ana says
This recipe is so good!
I made a double batch of this and then added a can of Hormel Chili With No beans to the sauce (normally I make my own chili mix but I didn’t have time this week with everythign going on). The cheese sauce alone is delicious so I’m REALLY glad I used this recipe for the chili cheese sauce I made. Thank you so much for this recipe! I’ve been making stuff for our New Year party and every time I make a cheese sauce I’m always disappointed because it either gets too thick/chunky/granular/etc. So I’ve used a new recipe each time. I am now done searching for cheese sauces because with this one I found the best recipe, with the best flavor and perfect creaminess and thickness and the flavor POPS.
I will be using this recipe for all of my future cheese and chili cheese sauces. So thank you for sharing this recipe!
Tracy says
Thanks, Ana. This makes me so happy to hear!! Love the idea of adding chili to this!
ayla says
Great cheese sauce! I like to use it as a sauce on my breakfast pizzas!
Becca says
Did anyone use almond milk instead? I don’t have regular milk
Donald says
Made this for my, rice chicken,broccoli mix, poured the cheese sauce over rice chicken broccoli mixture, felt I had enough for two days, as soon as tasted it it was gone in one meal. Great cheese sauce.
Elizabeth says
Glad I tried this (I’d never made a roux-based sauce before), but it’s not for me. I don’t care for the slight sandyness that the flour imparts (it wasn’t a raw-flour flavor issue-the flour was toasted golden wirh the butter) and it didn’t taste cheesy to me. Which makes since, since it’s more milk
flour and butter than cheese.
I’m not a bechamel fan so I might have been able to predict that I wouldn’t be into this, but it was a really easy recipe and the narrative leading up to the recipe was fun to read 🙂
Viktormark says
“Sandiness” occurs when the flour in a roux isn’t cooked enough.
Debbra99 says
Scalloped potatoes Au gratin with brocolli, smoked pork shoulder. Had to double cheese sauce recipe to cover potatoes.
Great cheese sauce recipe and easy and quick to do.
P
Judi says
My husband really enjoyed this. I made a light supper of steamed cauliflower and asparagus with baked cod. So the cheese sauce was the indulgence. I found following the recipe, it was a little thinner than I wanted based on the flour and butter proportions. I ended up adding more cheese which made it a bit grainy. Next time I will try 3 tablespoons of butter and flour instead of 2. That takes it to more of a medium white sauce rather than a thinner sauce. Then add the recommended amount of cheese. I can think of lots of great ways to use this. Hubby already wants nachos.
Dylan says
This is a horrible recipe. Watery sauce, which makes sense because other recipes use 2-4x the amount of flour, and 1.5x the amount of cheese versus liquid.
I usually don’t leave a 1 star review, but we had been craving cheese sauce all day and now I don’t have any more cheese to make a real recipe. Seriously disappointed. I don’t understand how any of these reviews even got a cheese sauce. And yes, I followed the directions to a T. My sauce didn’t break. It was just watery.
Did you actually make proper measurements when you made this recipe originally? Like did you eyeball the roux and just say 1 Tablespoon when it was actually 4?
Tracy says
Hey Dylan, this is an incredibly condescending comment. Writing recipes is my job. Of course I didn’t just eyeball the ingredients.
I saw your post on Reddit, and like the commenters there said, this sounds like user error. A ton of people have successfully made this recipe, and I’ve never gotten this particular complaint before. As you can see from the photos, this sauce is not super thick, but it should not be “watery.” If that’s how yours turned out, something went wrong in either the measuring or the making.
Pamela says
Regarding Dylan’s comment ””” It was no fault of the recipe ( which is amazing) Dylan obviously didn’t follow the directions as written !
Dylan CantCook says
Seeing as 20 other people either say it was perfect or to thick I’m 99.10% certain that you messed up…