Roux Madness

Ok, so a few days ago Mark and I were watching this show on the Food Network about gumbo.

The hardest (or most time consuming and labor intensive) part of making gumbo is making the roux. Alton Brown, the host of a very good show, showed me a way to take all the labor out of making the roux.

Let me preface this technique by saying that you must have a pot without plastic handles for this technique to work. Luckily we have a heavy duty set of Calphelon. Some pots say their handles are heat resistant but check thoroughly so you don't wind up with melted plastic on the floor of your oven.

You mix together the flour and oil in your pot. Alton says to use a cast iron dutch oven but we don't have one of those so we used a large stock pot. Place the pot in a 350 degree oven, on the center rack, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hour, stirring a couple of times during that time.

This technique worked like a charm. I didn't get the dark brick color that he achieved in that time, so we let ours go a little longer. In retrospect, I could have let it go even longer.

A fact I wasn't aware of is that the darker the roux gets, the lesser it's thickening power for the final gumbo. Therefor we added a couple of tablespoons of File at the very end to help it out.

One more note: If anyone knows where in the world (besides the coast) I can find shrimp with the heads still on them, let me know. Even Central Market didn't have any. What is this world coming to???