If you were to study French cooking, you would soon learn that there are 5 mother sauces in French cooking. I will not go into them presently, but they are certainly easy to find. I will say that 3 out of the 5 are thickened with a substance called a roux (pronounced ‘rew’). A roux is a simple thickening agent that can be added to a liquid to make a sauce. Many people use a roux to thicken a stew, others use it for gravies and some for creamy sauces.
Lets get started. You will only need 2 ingredients:
- A fat (classically it’s clarified butter, but also olive oil, bacon grease, Crisco, etc.)
- Flour
A roux is quite simple to make as you combine equal parts of these two ingredients— for every cup of fat, you use a cup of flour. You combine them in a skillet over medium heat using a whisk—it couldn’t be any easier!! It will combine easily and bubble when it’s ready to be used. The result will be a paste that you can add to any liquid you wish to thicken.
Different recipes that you may find will call for a blond roux or a brown roux. The only difference between these roux are the amount of time that you cook them. The longer you cook the roux, the darker in color it will become. For most purposes, a blond roux will do fine. Certain gumbos will call for a darker roux. The longer one cooks a roux, the more the fat molecules intwine with the starch and the harder it is to “break” the sauce.
I will address this problem in my next post. First, however, I would like to tell you my favorite uses of a roux. Check out the next post!
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