VEGAN BÉCHAMEL SAUCE (GLUTEN-FREE)

This rich, silky béchamel sauce is a total crowd-pleaser, as it is dairy-free AND gluten-free. It comes together in 15 minutes and freezes perfectly too. Wins across-the-board!

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Thick and velvety vegan white sauce, freshly stirred with a silicone spoon

This rich, silky béchamel sauce is a total crowd-pleaser, as it is dairy-free AND gluten-free. It comes together in 15 minutes and freezes perfectly too. Wins across-the-board!

Hello, friends. Rita here. It’s high time we share what might just be the handiest recipe in our whole kitchen: homemade béchamel sauce. And not just any béchamel—this one’s completely dairy- and gluten-free. A true people pleaser, if ever there was one.

I inherited an earlier version of this recipe from my mother. She wasn’t exactly keen on cooking, yet she had an unmatched talent for whipping up the most unforgettable meals. One of her greatest hits was a Christmas casserole that took four to five hours (!) to make. She insisted that every element of this dish was homemade, and by the end, not a single cupboard or drawer in our tiny kitchen would be left untouched. One of the key components—you guessed it—was the silkiest, most flavourful béchamel sauce you can imagine.

Her recipe, of course, used dairy milk and wheat flour. Swapping those out was simple, and honestly? The vegan version might even be better. We use unsweetened plant milk (check out our recipes for almond milk and oat milk), and instead of wheat flour, we go for chickpea flour.

Chickpea flour is a pantry staple for us. It’s gluten-free, protein-packed, and endlessly versatile. You’ll find it in our Vegan Spanish Tortilla, our Vegetable & Chickpea Fritters, and our Portuguese Veggie Hash—just to name a few. So don’t worry about buying a bag and getting stuck with it. You will use it. But even if you do end up with 15 litres of béchamel sauce on your hands (we haven’t quite gone that far, but hey—you do you), don’t fret—it freezes beautifully.

Ingredients for gluten-free vegan béchamel arranged on a plate: plant milk, chickpea flour, olive oil, salt, pepper, and nutmeg

Gluten-free vegan béchamel in a saucepan, stirred with a whisk and sprinkled with nutmeg

Hand whisking thick vegan béchamel with visible flecks of nutmeg

Gluten-free béchamel with a creamy texture, captured from above during stirring

Vegan Béchamel Sauce (Gluten-Free)

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4 cups / 1 litre

15 minutes

Ingredients

60 ml olive oil
70 g chickpea flour
1 litre plant-based milk
2 tsp sea salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp ground nutmeg

Instructions

Start by gathering, preparing and measuring all of the ingredients. This will improve your dynamic in the kitchen.

Heat the olive oil in a wide saucepan over medium heat. Add the chickpea flour and whisk well to combine.
Let the flour toast slightly before slowly adding 1 cup (250 ml) of plant milk. Whisk thoroughly to break up any lumps, then gradually pour in the remaining milk, whisking as you go.
Bring the mixture to a boil and cook it over medium–high heat, whisking frequently and scraping the bottom of the pan as you go—this helps prevent it from sticking or burning. Let it thicken until it reaches the desired consistency, then remove the pan from the heat.
Stir in the seasonings and mix well to combine. Use it straight away, or store it in an airtight container—up to 1 week in the fridge or 6 months in the freezer.