Creoles know about roux

Fat. Flour. That's it.

Put them together in the right way and you have roux. Put roux with anything else and it becomes more than roux. It makes gumbo thicker than water, makes béchamel creamy and bordelaise silky.

And it makes your Thanksgiving gravy. You probably already knew that. But if you know a little more about roux, you can make your gravy easier.

France gets the credit for the basic idea behind roux. But roux changed when it got to Louisiana. It got darker and thicker, and it got added to more things, like étoufées.

As a Southern cook, I thought I knew a lot about roux. I knew about roux colors, from blonde to peanut butter to chocolate. I knew how to keep it from burning in a well-blackened cast-iron skillet (don't stop stirring and don't make it when you're trying to do anything else).

A few months ago, I even taught a New Orleans native how to make a roux. She was too embarrassed to admit to her mother and sister that she didn't know how. That shows you the power of roux in a Louisiana family.

A science lesson

Then I went to New Orleans in October. And I learned a couple of things about roux that even I didn't know.

For such humble stuff, roux is really a science lesson in a pan. If you have a liquid and you stir flour into it, you get a mess. The flour granules cling to each other to block out the liquid, and you end up with liquid and lumps of flour.

If you do it the other way - heat the flour in a skillet and then stir in liquid - you end up with the same thing, only now the lumps of flour are probably burned.

If you want to turn the liquid into something thick and silky, you have to make the flour relax so it will grab droplets of liquid instead of other bits of flour. The way you do that is coat the flour with fat.

You can do it by melting fat - usually butter, lard, oil or meat drippings - and stirring flour into it. The fat coats the flour granules so they stay separate and blend with the liquid, and it browns the flour and releases its proteins to add flavor.

Cook the flour in the fat for a little while to take away the starchy taste, then stir in a liquid. In a few minutes, you have sauce. If you cook the flour for longer than a few minutes, you get a darker sauce.

Other starches - cornstarch, arrowroot, even potato starch - will thicken sauce. But flour has some advantages. You can cook a flour-thickened sauce for longer without losing the thickness. And flour is so common, you always have it around.

Now, let's get back to New Orleans. While there, I went to the New Orleans Cooking Experience, a local cooking school, to watch several chefs make Thanksgiving dishes, Creole-style.

Watch the expert

I watched Frank Brigtsen, the owner of Brigtsen's Restaurant and one of the most respected Cajun-Creole chefs in the city, make stuffed mirlitons, oyster dressing and turkey gravy. There are moments when new information grabs our attention. We call these "ah-ha moments." Sitting at Brigtsen's table, I heard him say a couple of things about roux and gravy that made me think "ah-ha."

First, he said you can make roux days, even weeks, in advance. You can refrigerate it, but there's really no need. If you make it with vegetable oil, it will keep at room temperature. Some of the oil will separate out. Just pour it off and use the flour paste.

"The only reason for the oil is to brown the flour," he said. The flour left behind is what will thicken a liquid.

Then he explained that he makes turkey stock in advance, too, roasting turkey wings and vegetables before adding water to simmer into stock.

On Thanksgiving, while the turkey is standing before carving, he adds the drippings from the roasting pan to the stock, boils it down to concentrate the flavors, and stirs in his ready-made roux. Simmer for a few minutes and it thickens.

It occurred to me suddenly that what he was making was an almost-instant turkey gravy. Most of the work can be done in advance, and you can finish it just before serving.

If you like it, remember to say thanks - to flour, to fat, to the French and to the Creoles.

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