Easy Garlic Cheddar Cheese Sauce Recipe (2024)

You want to know the secret to getting my kids to eat every veggie I put on their plate? This delicious garlic cheddar cheese sauce! If you thought you couldn’t make a sauce from scratch.. think again!

This recipe is quick and easy and you probably have all of the ingredients you need to make it already in your refrigerator or pantry. The rich, creamy cheddar cheese sauce is perfect for topping veggies like broccoli, squash, cauliflower, or even baked potatoes! My favorite way to use it though might be to top my ritz cracker chicken bake… YUM!

If I was going to eat one meal for the rest of my life it might just be that ritz cracker chicken, I mentioned above, topped with loads of this yummy garlic cheddar cheese sauce. I totally use my kids as an excuse to make it frequently since they will eat absolutely anything I top with it, but really, it is all me and my cravings putting it on the menu!

I absolutely love cheddar cheese and if you follow my blog then you will see it appear in lots and lots of my recipes. I sometimes just want to smother things in it though, and there is just no quick, easy, and most importantly delicious, cheddar cheese sauce that you can pick up at the store though. So of course, I needed to createone.

One of my favorite things about this sauce in particular is that most average people would have all of the ingredients to whip this up on hand on any given day. Because I am not so great at planning meals in advance and I plan more around what I am feeling like eating in the moment most days, this works out perfectly for me.

Add the fact that the garlic cheddar cheese sauce is super easy to make to the fact that it is pretty much magic on top of anything you want your kids to eat and you have perfection in my book.

Easy Homemade Garlic Cheese Sauce Recipe

Full printable recipe at bottom of this post. And before you forget use the PIN IT button to save this recipe to your dinner board so you can find it again easily!

Now let’s get to the elephant in the room… this is a sauce and sauces can be kind of intimidating. I know that I am someone who usually buys sauce at the grocery store, not really makes it myself, BUT this isn’t a 5 star delicacy that requires hours of careful pampering to create, it is just a quick, easy, and super delicious cheese sauce and I promise, there is nothing to be scared of!

Homemade Garlic Cheese Sauce – Ingredients

You only need 6 ingredients that you most likely already have in your refrigerator and pantry, so go grab them and let’s get started!

• 4 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
• 2 cups milk
• 16 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• salt & pepper to taste

Homemade Garlic Cheese Sauce – Instructions

To start heat up a skillet over medium heat and then add the butter and let it melt and cook until it bubbles. Then sprinkle the flour in while whisking until it dissolves in the butter. There are two important things in this step. First, don’t just dump the flour. You want it all to dissolve in the butter evenly so try and sprinkle and stir little by little. Second, you need a whisk. You really do. I would tell you if you didn’t but for making this sauce, it really helps everything blend together and it is just not something you can easily do with any other cooking tool.

Then you are going to add the garlic into the butter and flour mixture and continue to whisk the mixture until it starts to bubble and turns a light brown color. You will want to continually whisk the mixture throughout this step so that it cooks evenly which is key to creating a really good sauce. The brown color is full of delicious nutty flavor and will be a great base for the start of the sauce.

Now we will add the milk. To do this you will want to pour the milk in very slowly just a bit at a time and like before, continually whisk while you are pouring. This helps the sauce to combine into a nice creamy mixture. If you pour the milk to fast, add a lot at one time, or don’t mix it in quickly then the milk can curdle instead of blending into the mixture. Again though, no fear! Just go slowly and mix it all the time. If you do that, there is very little that can go wrong!

Keep whisking the mixture until all of the milk is added, mixed well, and then the mixture begins to bubble. Let it continue to boil for about a minute, while continuing to stir of course (when in doubt just keep stirring!) This will help the sauce to really combine and allow it to thicken.

Last but not least, add your cheddar cheese! In my humble opinion, the sharper the better, but use your favorite type of cheese to flavor the sauce with the taste you love. Add the cheese, and stir it in until it is melted and combined. This step isn’t as fickle as some of the above so throw it in any old way.

Take a little taste, then add some salt and pepper to taste, give it a few good sirs to combine everything well and you are ready to go! Now enjoy topping everything with this pan of deliciousness and don’t be surprised when your family begs you for more!