How To Make A Roux Video
Roux is a thickening agent made of equal parts flour and fat that is used in classical French cooking. Roux is fairly simple to make, as long as you follow a couple of guidelines.
Guidelines for Roux
- Don’t use margarine or shortening. Yes they’re cheap, but margerine tastes horrible and shortening adds no flavor; not to mention it can give you a bit of a fuzzy mouth feel.
- Use clarified butter, oil or animal fat.
- Don’t use whole butter. Whole butter is about 15% water and will give you a less consistent product than a roux made with pure fat.
- A good roux is paste like and is not runny or pourable. A roux that has too much fat and is too runny is called a slack roux. Excessive fat in your roux will be released into your sauce, making it greasy and forcing you to spend extra time skimming and de-fating your sauce.
- Cake flour has about 20% more thickening power than bread or AP (All Purpose) flour. However, since bread and AP flower are more common than cake flour, most recipes that call for a roux assume that you will be using AP flour.
Making Roux
The process for making roux is extremely simple. Just place equal parts of flower and fat, (traditionally clarified butter), in a sauce pan and cook over medium heat. How long do you cook it for? Well that depends on what kind of roux you wish to make.
There are basically three types of roux which are differentiated by the degree to which the roux is cooked.
White Roux
White roux is really more of a yellow roux that you basically cook for just a few minutes until the fat and flour are evenly mixed together and start to froth. You want to cook out the raw taste of the flour, but stop cooking the roux before it starts to turn color. White rouxs are used for white sauces that are cream and milk based such as bechamel and alfredo.
Blond Roux
Blond roux is cooked a little longer than your white roux, just until it starts to slightly turn color. Blond roux is used for white sauces that are stock based, such as veloutes.
Brown Roux
Brown roux is traditionally used for brown sauces, which are sauces based upon brown roasted stocks such as the mother sauce Espagnole. The key to a good brown roux is to cook it over low heat so that it browns evenly without scorching. Some chefs will even dry roast their flower in the oven first before making it into roux.
A good brown roux will have a rich and nutty aroma, and is great for thickening brown sauces and gravies. Just remember that a dark brown roux will have about a third of the thickening power of a blond or white roux.
Incorporating Roux Into a Sauce or Soup
Roux can be added to a sauce either warm or cold, but never hot. A sizzling hot roux will separate and break when it hits a cold sauce, causing lumps and the loss of the roux’s thickening power.
Once the roux is added into the liquid you wish to thicken, whisk vigorously to incorporate and bring sauce to a simmer. Most roux thickened sauces are simmered for at least 20 minutes to cook out any starchy taste created by the flour. During this simmering, it is a perfect time to skim off any scum or fat that rises to the top.
Now what kind of ratio and proportions should you use when thickening with a roux? It’s as easy as 3,4,5 & 6.
- 3 ounces of roux per quart of liquid will thicken a sauce to a thin or light consistency.
- 4 ounces of roux per quart = medium body sauce.
- 5 ounces of roux per quart = thick sauce.
- 6 ounces of roux per quart = heavy gravy.
Unfortunately, the ratio isn’t quite so easy for my metric friends. If you have any easier way to remember these ratios in metric, leave a comment below, but here is the direct conversion.
- 85 grams of roux per liter for a thin or light sauce consistency.
- 113 grams + 1 liter = medium body sauce.
- 141 grams + 1 liter = thick sauce.
- 170 grams + 1 liter = heavy gravy.
For more information on how to properly make and use rouxs, listen to The Free Culinary School Podcast Eipsode 9.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I think learning the roux technique is the single most useful basic sauce skill for rank amateur cooks (like me) with limited time since it is so easy to expand it into any number of simple sauces or gravies, all delicious. I make roux often; very useful technique in my opinion.
I totally agree, and that is why I put roux and mother sauces early on in the podcast, so people could start building a good, fundamental base.
The ultimate goal of this website and podcast isn’t to make you reliant on recipes, but to give you the skills you need to create your own recipes and culinary style.
thanks for these posts chef jacob
im a student chef and this website is really helping me to catch up and hone my skills 
thanks very much 
@ Frances,
Glad you’re enjoying the site. What culinary school are attending?
its gerardo’s culinary school here in the philippines
That’s awesome. You know, I’ve been looking for people who are currently going to culinary school to write about their experiences either here on the blog or over in the forum. If you’re interested, please shoot me an e-mail, or click the contact link at the top of the page.
heyyy will do
sorry for the delayed responce… was having a really hectic schedule at school with all the exams going on… anyway.. will surely be writing soonest about experiences and stuff 
thanks chef!
What is the ideal temperature for cooking the roux? Should it be cooked very gently or on medium/low or medium?
Never mind about my question about temperature for making the roux. I just listened to your podcast about cooking it on medium. Thank you.
Finally made chicken breasts that wowed my wife and creamy mashed potatoes ( pushed through a wire mesh strainer). No lumps and egregious amounts of butter. Had to make a mock chicken stock for a veloute as I haven’t had time to make the real thing yet. I used the carton stock and used a touch of chicken base like mentioned in the pod cast. Also sweated some onion, celery and carrots before adding the stock and threw in half a bay leaf, green peepercorns, fresh thyme and a clove. I added a blond roux etc and made a sauce supreme
after the ” mock ” veloute was done. Used the three station breading technique to do the chicken and sauteed them in clarified butter I had previously made. What a hoot! I always enjoyed cooking and I am enjoying learning the basics. A million thanks. BTW , it looks like the only way I am going to make a veal stock is to purchase a butchered veal shank, learn to makf osso bucco and save the cut up bones. I can’t find bones anywhere in town.
Listened to all podcasts several times and have really gotten inspired to reach a deeper level of cooking.
Sounds awesome! I can tell you’ve really been paying attention to the podcast and website. If you haven’t already, join the FCS forum so you can post some pictures of all the great stuff you’ve been cooking. Good Luck.
Every student is taught that a roux is equal parts fat and flour. This is only true if the ingredients are measured by weight. By volume measure (much more common), it’s closer to 2 to 1. One cup of fat blended with one cup of flour will make an almost useless slack roux, but 8 ounces (by weight) of fat blended with 8 ounces of flour (by weight) will make an almost perfect roux. This translates to a volume measure of 1 cup fat with 1- 2/3 cup flour.
A good vegan fat alternative I’ve found to butter for a roux is Smart Balance Light. It’s an oil blend of palm fruit, soybean, canola, flax seed and olive oils that has a really buttery flavor. Many people probably aren’t cooking vegan, but it’s also nice if you have a milk allergy like me. The roux just weren’t the same with regular oil to me. It comes together perfectly. Now to perfect a milk-less soy white sauce though, oy. I’ve been trying for a while. I think I’m close though.
Thanksgiving turkey juice from the pan was collected in glass container and refrigerated. The result was a collection of jelled juice(I believe this is called roux) with a solidified fat plug sealing the container. Is this roux starter? How long will it keep in the fridge? Should I dispose of contents.
@Ken,
What you have in your fridge is called fond; its basically the liquid that is released from the meat during the cooking process. This is an important part of making gravy, but it isn’t the roux. Roux is what I demonstrated at the top of this post in the video, and is used to thicken your fond to turn it into gravy.
Being an average American, I have little experience with the metric system, but when I was in culinary school, one of our lectures on thickening sauces suggested using a percentage of roux to liquid rather than measurement in ounces per quart. We were told a roux equaling 10% of the total volume of liquid yields a thin sauce, 11.5% yields a medium sauce, and 13% produces a thick sauce. This requires a good mathematical mind or a calculator, but may be easier than remembering odd numbers.