Cooking Tip - Making Roux

Making this could not be any more simple but will make the difference between having a slightly thick and lumpy sauce/soup/stew or having a velvety smooth thickness to it. Sometimes you can make this right in the pan you are making your recipe but sometimes it's best to make it in a separate pan and add it to later down the road. It really depends on the recipe in question. Such as I've made a soup that required whole veggies to boil in the broth but then needed to be thickened after being pureed but then had made a wonderful cheese sauce that just needs to be thickened right away and then have cheese added after.

What ever reason that you need a roux, it's really 5mins work. Be it from 2tbs to 1 cup, it all takes the same time. I've given both the amounts below for a large soup pot full or for just a couple of cups of liquid.

Ingredients

5quarts/litres liquid
 ♥ 1/2 cup butter (1stick)

 ♥ 1 cup flour flour

2-4 cups (1litre) liquid
 ♥ 2tbs butter
 ♥ 2tbs GF flour

Directions
In a small sauce pan, slowly melt butter on a low to medium heat, don't let it boil or melt too quickly as it will burn and you don't want that to happen.

Once butter is completely melted, pour in all of the flour and whisk quickly. Combine it and leave it on the heat but keep whisking and moving the mixture around to ensure that it doesn't burn. Cook while whisking 1-2 minutes. You want to cook the raw flour taste out of the mixture. As you do this you will find the mixture will 'loosen' up a bit and become a bit more liquid then when you first started, this is the stage where you officially have a roux. Remove from heat completely.

You can leave this mixture sitting for a bit but I wouldn't leave it more then an hour and no it doesn't really last over night or so in the fridge. In fact if you have soup/sauce left over the next day even, you'll find it will need liquid added to it because it will become much thicker once cooled.