A proper roux makes sauce that's glistening, gorgeous

A proper roux makes sauce that's glistening, gorgeous
Scott Daniels

A dark roux was the base for a batch of étouffée with the addition of creole seasonings, dark beer and a fragrant shrimp stock.

                        

Before any of us were born, in the households of the deep south it was said a young woman who could make a good roux was worth more than any dowry her family could gather for her.

One would like to think we are living in more enlightened times in which a woman would be valued for greater things than her ability to stir flour, but the way things are going these days, perhaps not. But it is very much true that any person, male or female, who wants to be able to step up and save the day when your sister-in-law is making a mess of the gravy should take the time to master the subtle differences in this perfect thickener.

My mother used to thicken gravies with slowly added bits of plain, dry flour, and seeing that happen helps me understand why gravy without lumps is thought to be such an impossible old-school miracle that people buy the stuff ready made in jars.

Her gravy had no lumps, but I have no idea at all how she pulled it off because adding dry flour to a liquid is almost certainly going to give you tiny, white, floating dumplings. Even if the flour is mixed up in water first, you’re probably going to have a mess as soon as the cold flour touches the heat.

The key to avoiding all this is a roux, which is nothing more than fat and flour cooked together to a smooth consistency. The key word here is “cooked.” Uncooked flour has a decided taste that is at odds with whatever you’re adding it to. It tastes like a mouthful of flour scooped from the bag. To fix this, it needs to be cooked to remove that weird raw flavor.

We usually learn the basics of making a roux out of necessity when making the white sauce that is one of the “master” sauces of French cooking. I remember making a white sauce in the high school foods class I took to avoid real classes like calculus.

White sauce, or more properly béchamel, is simply 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour to 1 cup milk. The butter is heated, the flour added and carefully stirred over gentle heat until cooked, then the milk whisked in rapidly until the whole business thickens. Adjusting the ratios makes for a thicker or thinner sauce as desired. The cooked flour and butter is the roux part.

The French roux translates as ginger, which gives a clue to the versatility of this fat-and-flour mix. It is in the choice of fat used, the cooking time, and ratio of fat and flour that the mastery that was so prized in Louisiana comes through.

Swapping out butter for a high-smoking-point vegetable oil and cooking the flour and oil very carefully over higher heat yields something that moves in color stages from white, to blonde, to tan, to ginger, to peanut butter and finally to a deep, rich mahogany.

Stopping at any of these stages and adding hot stock is the route to a remarkably rich, smooth gravy. The darkening flour also takes on an increasingly nutty flavor that is another secret to good sauces.

After the mahogany stage, it’s a short ride to burned and bitter, so a dark roux is something requiring careful stirring, first with a whisk, then with a wooden spoon, and careful babysitting throughout.

Last weekend we turned out an absolutely stunning dark roux as base for a batch of étouffée, for which I gave you a good recipe a few years ago. With the addition of creole seasonings, dark beer and a fragrant shrimp stock, it became a sauce so glistening and gorgeous I was tempted to ask it for a phone number.

Keep in mind the smoke point of the fat you choose. I would rule out olive oil for this reason as well as its likelihood to add a flavor you’re not looking for. Stick to vegetable, peanut or coconut oil.

Some cooks swear by baking the flour and fat at low heat overnight, but that’s not the kind of gabby food blogger, slow cooker cook you want to be. Master this art, and you’re gold.

Find the étouffée recipe by searching www.thebargainhunter.com.


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