The starting point for many dishes is a well-made roux sauce
When I started working in kitchens as a boy, the world of cooking I entered was a classical French one. All the sauces that we made – such as Bechamel or Veloute – were based on a roux – that is a paste of flour and butter.
The most common use for the roux method is for making a white sauce, which uses a roux paste as its base, with milk added. You can also use the same roux method and add stock rather than milk to the flour and butter mixture; this is called a veloute sauce and is the method I’ve used in my Classic Fish Pie. Lots of people struggle to make a roux sauce but, in fact, it’s very simple.
My golden rules to Roux-making:
- First you need to get the right ratio of butter to flour to liquid. The ratio I recommend is 20g of butter to 20g of flour to 600ml liquid.
- One key thing to remember when making a roux sauce is that you should either have a hot roux paste to which you add cold liquid or a cold roux paste to which you add hot liquid.
- Melt the butter in a thick-based pan. If you make a roux sauce in a flimsy, thin-based pan, you’re in danger of scorching the sauce, which will spoil the flavour.
- Once the butter is melted, add in the flour and mix thoroughly. Now, gradually add in the liquid a bit at a time, stirring well.
- A good roux sauce should be free of lumps. The way to achieve this is to stir it constantly. When I was a young chef, we had to use wooden spoons to make our roux sauces so as not to damage the copper pans. It’s very hard to make a lump-free roux sauce using a wooden spoon. Today, however, people cook with stainless steel pans so there’s no need to use a wooden spoon. I recommend using a whisk rather than a wooden spoon to stir the roux as this means you won’t have any lumps.
- I cook my roux sauces gently and slowly so as to cook out the taste of the flour. When you make a roux sauce it’s not a big job but it’s a job that needs mothering.
