What is ROUX?

It all starts with a good ROUX which can take up to an hour to make, and if you burn it you have to start all over again!

Welcome to our blog post about the history of New Orleans' Okra File Gumbo. New Orleans is a melting pot of cultures, just like its cuisine... Being a native of New Orleans, when I became Vegan I really missed all of my old favorites like Gumbo, Poboys, Stuffed Artichokes, Oyster Dressing, and so many other fabulous dishes. In researching how to re-create them into Vegan options, I started learning about the history of our New Orleans' Creole + Cajun Cuisines (Yes they are different). Creole derives from when we were under Spanish rule and Cajun derives from when we were under French rule. But actually there is a third + fourth .... African and Choctow cultures as well.... In our blog we will share our unique "melting pot" Heritage and re-create via GRAB n GO Vegan!

ROUX Today

Creole and Cajun recipes all start with a ROUX.

Many New Orleans (Creole and Cajun) recipes start with “First you make a roux.”

A Roux (pronounced “roo”) is browned in a mixture of white wheat flour and a cooking fat (oil or butter) that is used to thicken sauces, stews, and gravies.  Roux serves as the base for most gumbo recipes where a rich, deep, hearty flavor, and texture is desired.

As a subject of controversy, roux seems to have been under the radar until the 1970s, with the advent of “nouvelle cuisine.” Many people were watching fat (particularly saturated fat) and calories, and they felt that butter, lard, and flour did not belong in the kitchen or on the dinner plate. Then Paul Prudhomme exuberantly surfaced and brought a renewed interest in the roux with him. Roux, once again, appeared on the front burner of the food scene. (Though it had never disappeared or even diminished from traditional Cajun cooking.)

Roux, in today’s culinary lexicon, usually refers to Cajun roux, which mixes oil or lard with flour and is generally cooked in a cast iron panon the stovetop over medium heat for a long time. 

Experienced gumbo cooks will use it as the main thickener and will endeavor to make it as dark as possible.  The richness of dark colored roux adds both flavor and color to the finished gumbo.

Approximate Time Table for Cooking Traditional Roux:

There are five (5) different stages of cooking a roux.  Cooking times can vary, depending on the type and amount of roux you’re trying to make.  Different roux are dictated by the amount of time they spend in the pan and categorized by their color.  As your roux gets darker, it gains flavor and color but loses some of its thickening power.  The different stages of roux are as follows:

1. White (Light) Roux:  Usually takes 10 to 15 minutes to develop.  This roux is useful for thickening sauces, soups and other dishes.  Also, it is an ingredient in some pastries and entrees.

2. Light Brown (Peanut Butter) Roux:  This roux can take up to 40 minutes to fully develop and has the color of peanut butter.

3. Medium Brown Roux:  If you cook the roux for 50 to 60 minutes, you will get a medium brown roux that should be the color of a copper pot.

4. Dark Brown (Chocolate) Roux:  When you cook the roux for 70 to 80 minutes, you will end up with a dark brown roux the color of dark chocolate.

5. Brick Roux:  This roux is the final stage of cooking your roux before roux failure.  It is reddish in color and nutty to the nose.  This roux has almost no thickening properties and is used strictly for flavor or as the base of a dish.

A Partial History of ROUX

As far back as 1651, François Pierre La Varenne wrote a cookbook in which he mentioned liaison de farine which was made with flour and lard. He called this mixture “thickening of flower,” and it later came to be known as farine frit, or roux.

Roux has been thickening savory dishes for centuries. Its first incarnation was in France and made with butter and flour. This mixture is only heated for a few minutes—just enough time to cook the flour—and is the base of many sauces (including white or béchamel sauce) as well as soups and stews. Butter is the fat used, as butter is typical in French cooking (rather than the lard or oil used in Cajun roux).

A butter-flour roux is most often used as the base of a sauce to which milk, cream or broth is added, and cooked for only minutes as butter would burn if cooked at a high temperature, or for a long time. The butter-flour mixture can also be made ahead and kept in the refrigerator to use whenever a dish needs to be thickened.

This achieves the same purpose as the better-known buerre manié, a paste made by mixing equal amounts of flour and soft butter. Buerre manié is often made at the last minute when it is realized that a stew, soup, or sauce is not thick enough. The cook frantically mixes soft butter with flour and stirs it into the hot sauce, stew or soup in increments, until enough has been added to achieve the desired consistency. Like roux, buerre manié can be made ahead and stored, covered, in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. A good thing to have around if you do a lot of cooking.

As far back as 1651, François Pierre La Varenne wrote a cookbook in which he mentioned liaison de farine which was made with flour and lard. He called this mixture “thickening of flower,” and it later came to be known as farine frit, or roux.

La Varenne’s recipe:

“Thickening of flower. Melt some lard, take out the mammocks; put your flower into your melted lard, seeth it well, but have a care it stick not to the pan, mix some onion with it proportionably. When it is enough, put all with good broth, mushrooms and a drop of vinegar. Then after it hath boiled with its seasoning, pass all through the strainer and put in a pot. When you will use it, you shall set it upon warm embers for to thicken or allay your sauces”.

In the mid-1700s, the mixture was called roux de farine, employed butter rather than lard, and was cooked to a light creamy color. One hundred years after that, many French chefs thought roux de farine was relied upon too much, while others (including Antonin Carême) felt differently. Carême believed that any good chef considered roux indispensable, “as indispensable to cooks as ink to writers.”