The first type of sauce base I will cover is called a ‘Roux’, pronounced ‘roo’, simply made from clarified butter and flour. The basic steps for making a roux are:
- Fist you'll want to make some clarified butter. Take some butter, there’s no set quantity but to get you started let’s add ½ a stick (chopped) and start melting it in a pot, use a mediumish heat, you don’t want to burn anything.
- When melting butter leave the pot on the heat just long enough to get some liquid going then remove the pot from the heat and swirl the butter around until it’s all melted. The melted butter should still be yellow.
- Place the pot back on the heat and slowly add a bit of flour to the melted butter (again, there’s no set quantity but you can start by adding about ½ the amount of butter that’s in the pot) after adding a bit of flour stir it around until it’s all incorporated and check the consistency. If it’s still quite liquidy add more flour and stir again, keep adding a bit of flour at a time until the consistency is thick and it can hold its shape.
- And that’s it, you now have a roux, a basic starting point for many sauces!
There are three basic styles of roux:
- White roux is cooked just enough to get the desired texture with a frothy, bubbly appearance and is used in white sauces.
- Blond roux is cooked slightly longer than the white roux, is darker in color and is used in slightly darker sauces or those needing a richer flavor.
- Brown roux is cooked the longest and has a dark color and a nutty flavor. Something you need to keep in mind when using a darker roux is that the darker they are the more you’ll need to thicken your sauce.
Thickening a Liquid Using a Roux
There are two ways to use a roux to thicken a sauce:- Add a cold liquid to the hot roux while stirring rapidly with a whisk
- Add a room-temperature roux a hot liquid while stirring vigorously
Final Roux Tips
- Heavy pots help alleviate burning
- Use a whisk when making the roux and when thickening a sauce
- Careful not to over thicken your sauce, a roux won’t start to thicken your sauce until it’s practically reached the boiling point and will continue to thicken for a few minutes while simmering.
Now head on over to the page on making a Béchamel (it uses a roux as a thickener), learn it and try making one of your own!