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For sauces based on milk, I assume the original versions would use 'whole milk'. Does whole milk impart some quality that cannot be replicated with 2% or skim?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

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This event was on August 11, 2026

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Roy L. Cox

For sauces based on milk, I assume the original versions would use 'whole milk'. Does whole milk impart some quality that cannot be replicated with 2% or skim?

Answer

There's significant differences between using a whole milk or a 2% and skim. Basically, what they're doing is adding water to the milk content. So what you're doing is kind of reducing all of the other things that are in the whole milk for that. So any of the vitamin, protein, and fat content is going to be reduced quite a lot because of the addition of water compared to that. So your sauces definitely will see a difference in that. They'll tend to break more often if it's a 2% or a skim than a whole milk, and they will sometimes not thicken the same way, but they're definitely going to have a different mouthfeel at the same time, too. The mouthfeel, the fat, especially the whole fat, is going to be a little more creamy, as you would think, and a little more velvety at the same time, too. But there is definitely a difference on those, and depending on the use case, there's 100 different ways it could go right or wrong, depending on if you're using whole versus a skim or 2%. Hope that helps, Roy.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.