Can I substitute skim milk for canned evaporated fat-free milk?

[jliah]

I was planning to make Carmelized-Onion Lasagna WIth Gorgonzola Sauce for lunch today and noticed that I had overlooked the canned milk when I made out my grocery list. Do you think it would be ok to just use regular skim milk instead? I hate the thought of running to the store this morning!! Thanks for your help.

[schuh]

Evaporated fat-free milk is thicker than regular milk. Regular skim might make your lasagna sauce runny.

[jliah]

What if I were to increase the flour when making the white sauce? It calls for 2 T. Do you think it would work to maybe use 4T. of flour? (Maybe that would be too much.)

[emilycat]

I made this dish last week, and it was incredible -- I think I posted on another thread that it was one of my favorite lasagne's ever. But the sauce is already kinda runny, and although it thickens up while baking, I'm not sure you'd want to use just regular milk. The extra-flour thing may very well work, though, so maybe you could try that. It'll still taste great, regardless!

[KValley]

jiliah,

If you weren't so darn far away, I'd have you over for lunch- I've got leftovers of this lasagna from Saturday night's dinner. It's fantastic, and even better as leftovers since the flavors have had a chance to meld.

I agree with Emily- the sauce is pretty runny to begin with (I stirred and stirred!!)- but it does thicken in the baking. Do you have a little cornstarch you could add? That might do the trick.

I also recommend using sweet onions (Vidalias, Walla Walla Sweets)- such a great contrast to the sharpness of the bleu cheese. YUM http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/smile.gif

Julie

[Vanessa]

Hi. I have not made this recipe but when recipes call for cream or evaporated milk because I use Lactaid milk I use the milk then thicken with cornstarch...maybe it would work with your recipe too?

[Searcher]

I'm not sure why, but when you heat milk to a simmer, then add it to your flour mixture it seems to thicken quite a bit more. My old mac and cheese recipe has you do this and it's amazing the difference when I don't heat the milk. I have almost double the sauce and it's thin. I'm not sure if this would work with evaporated milk but it does work with regular, low fat and skim milks.

[jliah]

I made this recipe for lunch, and it was AWESOME!!!! I did double the flour to 4 T and used the regular skim milk. It was PERFECT that way. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

Unfortunately, 2 of my kids didn't appreciate this lasagna because of the zuchinni (which they call "puke-inni"). We all loved the sauce. So in our house we had 3 enthusiastic thumbs up and 2 equally-enthusiastic thumbs down.