Roux
Thicken your soup/sauce/whatever with roux. Not sure this really needs a recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup vegetable (soybean) oil
Directions
- Whisk flour into oil, preventing clumps from forming.
- Cook mixture on medium heat, stirring constantly, until the flour is brown.
- Cool completely before storage.
Notes
- Other neutral oils, such as corn or canola/rapeseed, with a high smoke point can be used instead. Avoid olive oil or animal fats, as even on low heat, it gets bitter and weird-tasting quickly.
- Stir CONSTANTLY. This takes a long time - well over an hour usually. Put on a podcast, wear your comfy shoes for standing, and stir.
- It stores very well in a jar in the fridge. A batch goes a long way, since it’s usually used a tablespoon or two at a time.
- The shade of brown you stop cooking it at determines the flavors. Golden is more of a toasty flavor and it’s more versatile in the recipes it can go into. The darker shades give a deep umami-rich flavor for savory dishes. I tend to stop just short of “milk chocolate bar” colored.
- It’s done once it stops foaming under heat, but before browning begins. Stop here for a delicate white sauce (such as béchamel).
- Seriously, don’t stop stirring it. Even the tiniest little bit of burned flour makes the whole batch smell sour and burnt.
- Here’s a picture of the roux at various stages of cooking. Once it’s done cooking, pouring it into a dry quarter-sheet pan will help it cool faster. This batch stopped at a chocolate-y brown.
roux darkening, clockwise from top left