A roux is flour and fat cooked together to be used as a thickener for sauces, stews, or other dishes. To make a roux, usually, equal parts flour and fat are used. Butter, clarified butter, margarine, or animal fats make good choices for a roux. Among animal fats, chicken, beef, or lard can all be used and they will all produce quite different flavors and textures so it is important to choose carefully! You want the fat you use to be appropriate to the sauce or dish you want to make. When in doubt, use butter or clarified butter, as you can hardly go wrong with it.
Vegetable oil or vegetable shortening (like Crisco) can also be used to make a roux, but they add no flavor and you do want your roux to add a nice base flavor to the sauce or dish you are making. Vegetable shortening can be a problem as once it is made into a roux and incorporated into a sauce, it’s high melting point means that it wants to go solid again easily, resulting in a weird mouthfeel. Other highly flavored oils may be too difficult to match to the sauce you are making.
Best All-Around Fat For a Roux
If you want one fat that will always be a great choice for making a roux, go with clarified butter. Regular whole butter can absolutely be used for a roux and if you only make one occasionally, there is no need to have clarified butter on hand just for that. However, clarified butter will give a wonderful flavor, will mix better with the flour, and be easier to work with. Whole butter has more water in it and this will cause some of the flour starch to gelatinize, making it a bit harder to deal with than clarified butter.
Type Of Flour For Roux
Most home cooks will use all-purpose flour to make a roux, but you can also use bread flour as both have fairly similar thickening power. While a basic roux recipe will start with equal parts fat and flour, you sometimes have to adjust the amount of flour or fat. while cooking, your roux should be a thick paste, something like cake frosting. However, if it is a bit thinner, this doesn’t mean it will fail to thicken, as long as the amount of flour is appropriate for the amount of liquid.
How much flour do you need? It’s a simple formula. Use two tablespoons each of flour and butter for each one cup of liquid in your sauce or dish. Of course, you can adjust this formula depending on the thickness you want to achieve in the final result. The basic formula will create a proper bechamel sauce when using one cup of milk, resulting in a sauce that coats the back of a spoon and has the consistency of heavy cream. In other words, not to thick and not too thin. Actual results can vary somewhat because not all flour has the same starch content and it is the starch that is responsible for the thickening power.
Using Too Much Fat
If you use too much flour, there will not be enough fat to coat all the flour grains. However, in general, a very stiff, thick roux is usually better than a thin roux, often called a “slack roux.” When a roux has too much fat, the excess fat can end up rising to the top of the final sauce or dish and will have to be skimmed off and can result in a greasy mouthfeel. Not good!
So, while adding more fat to your flour and be tempting as it makes it easier to stir, avoid it and keep your roux nice and thick. Some chefs make very thick roux indeed, even increasing the amount of flour to three times that of the fat. I stick with the basic home cook method of two tablespoons of fat to two tablespoons of flour. Using volume measurements will work fine for you at home. If you want absolute precision, you’ll need to weight your ingredients on a kitchen scale. It’s best to use the grams setting.
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour = approx. 30 grams by weight (about one ounce)
- 2 tablespoons butter = approx. 28 grams (just under one ounce)
Types of Roux
White roux: In a white roux, the flour is cooked just a few minutes, until the starchy taste has been cooked out of the flour. Although it’s called a white roux, when cooked with butter it will be a pale-yellow color. For white roux, you can use medium heat, stirring almost constantly for even cooking of the flour.
Blonde roux: (pale roux): Blond roux is cooked just a bit longer than white roux. It is ready just as the roux starts to turn to a darker color. In French cooking, this kind of roux is used for a Velouté or sauces that use light colored stocks (pretty much everything but a bechamel).
Brown roux: For brown roux, cook the flour until it changes color and become brown. This gives the flour a nutty flavor. This kind of roux is utilized more often in Cajun and Creole cooking. For a brown roux, use LOW HEAT and stir constantly to keep from burning the flour and creating bitter flavors.
Adding Liquid to a Roux
When adding a liquid to be thickened to a roux, it is best to make sure that the liquid being added is close in temperature to the roux itself. Adding cold liquid to a hot roux can result in the roux separating. You should also not add cold roux to a hot liquid. Heat the liquid you are adding to the roux in advance to keep the flour from clumping up.
When you add your roux to a liquid, or vice versa, gradually add the one to the other and stir constantly. When adding liquid, gradually add the liquid a little at a time and stir between each addition, allowing the roux to be mixed in thoroughly and start thickening. This will ensure that the roux doesn’t “break,” which is when the fat separate out of the roux.Â
Cajun and Creole Roux
The roux is a foundational aspect of many classic Cajun and Creole dishes, including Gumbo and Étouffée. These roux often go well beyond the basic brown stage, creating a roux that is a deep mahogany or even a chocolate color. To make a roux this dark, patience is required. Cooking on anything but low heat is likely to scorch the flour, creating bitter tastes that will ruin your final dish.
One trick to making a very dark roux is to brown the flour in the oven before making the roux. However, this may be tricker than carefully browning the flour in the fat, so I’d advise against it unless you have plenty of experience doing it.
Remember that a very dark roux has much less thickening power than a light roux, sometimes up to half as much. This is just fine for the Cajun and Creole one-pot dishes they are used for, as you do not want to over-thicken the soup or stew you are trying to create.
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Why Does My Dark Roux Get Thinner?
When you are making a brown or darker roux, you’ll find that the roux, even if it starts out as a thick paste, will gradually become thinner. At the end of cooking, it may appear to be a slack roux. This is a normal part of making a very dark roux. As the starch in the flour cooks and breaks down, it loses it’s thickening power, causing the roux itself to become thinner. This is why darker roux have less thickening power. They are used for flavor, but also still can serve to thicken a dish.Â
When making a thicker gravy or sauce with a dark roux, you can add more flour at the beginning or make more roux that you would need when making a white or blonde roux.Â
Basic Roux Making Procedure
To make a roux, use a saucepan on low to medium heat. For a white or blond roux, use medium heat. For a brown or darker roux, use low heat.
Add the butter, clarified butter, or other fat to the pan and allow it to melt. Add the correct amount of flour and stir to combine with a small whisk. Continue stirring the fat and flour mixture to ensure even heating and cooking of the flour. Cook until the roux reaches the color you desire.
