Mondo Knows Facts
A dark roux is flour cooked until nutty
In Louisiana kitchens it goes far past golden, to the colour of chocolate Roux begins as equal weights of flour and fat, stirred together over heat. The flour browns as its starch and proteins react, and a Creole gumbo roux is cooked until it is deep brown and smells of toast, which can take 45 minutes of constant stirring. Dark roux thickens less than pale roux because the starch is partly broken down. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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More facts like this
Cooking flour in fat creates a roux thickening baseEqual parts fat and flour coat starch granules to prevent clumping in hot liquidsStarch granules swell and burst in heatHeated in water they absorb it, thicken the liquid and set on coolingGumbo can be thickened with sassafras leafGround dried leaves called filé are stirred in at the end to bind the potCeviche firms fish without any heatLime juice changes the proteins so they tighten and turn opaqueBiryani is built in layersParboiled rice and a cooked meat base steam together in a sealed potPaella takes its name from the panThe Valencian word refers to the wide shallow vessel, not the dish itself
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Tags: roux, gumbo, thickening
A dark roux is flour cooked until nutty: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- In Louisiana kitchens it goes far past golden, to the colour of chocolate. The figure is taken from The Food Timeline, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.