See What a Roux Can Do For You

As a follow-up to a previous blog entry, I'm going to go a little bit further in showing what you can do with just a little flour and butter. This combination, called a roux, is the basis of many sauces. By cooking the flour in the butter, starch granules in the flour begin to break, and when liquid is added, the granules absorb the liquid, thickening the sauce. A roux can also be made with other melted fats such as lard, bacon fat or any cooking oil. Likewise, any starchy flour, such as rice flour or potato flour, can be used for making a roux.

Knowing how to make a simple white sauce (or to use the fancier French term, a Béchamel sauce), is a key building block in making a lot of different things. I'm going to demonstrate using the recipe from my favourite cooking book:

• Melt 14 g butter over medium heat in a pan.
• Stir in 8 g flour. Make sure the flour and butter is well blended, and has cooked for several minutes until it's a blond to light brown colour.
• Add 256g milk, increase the heat to medium-high, and stir or whisk the mixture constantly until it has thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

With this simple ingredient now at your disposal, you can now add a layer of flavour to your meals.  Adding equal parts Gruyère and Parmesan cheese after adding the milk makes a great cheese sauce, more formally called a Mornay sauce; I use mozzarella and cheddar in my macaroni and cheese recipe. A spoonful of mustard or mustard seeds (or mustard with mustard seeds) gives you a mustard sauce that goes well with grilled fish. By letting the roux cook until it gets a dark brown in colour, you can make yourself a bayou sauce by adding onions, garlic, and Creole seasonings. Substituting chicken stock for milk in a blond-coloured roux creates a velouté sauce, which, like a Béchamel, is a starter for other sauces. The addition of lemon juice, egg yolk, and cream to a velouté sauce creates an albufera sauce, good for chicken or asparagus; shallots, white wine, lemon juice, and parsley makes a bercy sauce, which is also good on fish. Adding mushrooms, parsley, and lemon to a velouté turns it into a poulette sauce (good for chicken) while adding diced and sautéed onions, paprika, and white wine makes a Hungarian sauce for use on other meats. “Cream of” anything soup uses a thin white sauce for body, and with the right amount of pan drippings from your roast, you can use a roux to make a simple gravy. You can freeze your roux and store it up to 6 months without any problems. For easier use, put the roux in plastic ice-tray molds until it freezes, then store them in the freezer in a freezer bag.