Roux and file' (was RE: [Sca-cooks] Turkey day odds and ends)

[Gorgeous Muiredach]

>That's pretty slick!

Thanks..  I wish I could claim the idea as my own...  I can't!  :) It was
an old chef who showed me this technique.  The guy musta been 247 years
old, if not twice that.  What a character :-)  He's the one who threw his
clog at me once, and I took his clog and sank it in the brown beef stock
that was cooking in the steam kettle.  All 75 or so gallons had to be
ditched.  But that's another story I'll tell if you ask nicely :-)

>   Have you tried it and found the flavor similar to
>the long and "sometimes twice or three times repeated since it scorched"
>method of the dark roux?

Yes, the flavours are succesfully interchangeable.  You still have to cook
the flour with the fat for a little bit, but that's more a question of
mixing up.

It could be argued that if you use butter as a fat base for your roux, the
flavour of the "burned" butter will not be present if you brown the flour
in the oven by itself.  There is indeed a slight taste difference to the
roux itself, but in the end, when you add all the ingredients for the
recipe, burned butter or not burned butter makes nearly no difference that
I could find.  Of course, other's palates may be more discriminating than I
am :-)  (inside joke:  I don't do discrimination in any way, shape or form...)

Gorgeous Muiredach the Odd
Clan of Odds
Shire of Forthcastle, Meridies
mka Nicolas Steenhout
"You must deal with me as I think of myself" - J. Hockenberry