Standard Roux Ingredients 1/2 cups each flour and oil, heavy skillet patience.....

Its best cooked in heavy skillet that holds heat, preferably seasoned iron but not necessary.

1. Chop up several handfuls of onion, celery, and bell peppers and set aside mixed in large bowl.

2. Put skillet on heat and turn to medium high and let skillet warm a bit.
Add oil, then wait for oil to begin moving around, much like frying oil.
Now add flour, it will sizzle, begin stirring it and stir through the lumps until
it is smooth.

3. It may have already begun to turn in color slightly, simply keep stirring it,
not too fast, just to keep the flour that is touching the skillet moving and
taking turns. Cover the whole skillet bottom with your strokes, dont leave portions of the
skillet bottom unmoved or it will burn in those places.

4. If you see smoke begin to appear, it it too hot, turn it down and move skillet to no heat
and keep stirring until it cools then return to heat when there is only a little smoke.
It's perfectly normal for roux to smoke as you cook it. I prefer to cook mine just at the smoke
bearing line and pull it off the heat when it starts to smoke.

5. Flour will continue to darken, and at some point, it will undergo a transformation
in which the flour gains a sort of grainy consistency, moving from a paste to more of
sand in oil look  sort of....
You will see it when it happens, I don't know what Chef's call that but it definetly happens.

6. Keep stirring, after this happens, the roux cooks faster, and you must watch it
to not let it burn. By now, it is gaining a dark brown color, and you may stop here if you wish.
The longer it cooks, the stronger it will be. Dont try to cook it to Ya Ya if this is your first try.
Ya Ya is for REAL Cajuns and you may not like the taste anyway.

7. Cook it to deep brown, when it has arrived at this, add your vegetables to the roux and stir it.

8.Once it calms down,  spoon the mixture into the pot and stir it in......
(or add cool water to break it down before you add it to the pot)

I began cooling my roux by adding a big can of tomato sauce instead of veggies to it some years ago.
It probably isn't true Cajun, but it adds a smoky tomato flavor to the gumbo that is excellent.
(Just another option)

**Do not pour hot roux into hot water, or cold roux into cold water.
You must have a temperature difference of the roux will separate and the oils will come to the top,
the flour will get clumpy, it doesn't taste nearly as good if this happens.**

That's all there is to it!
You are on your way to ROUX MASTER!!!!!!!

If you have never cooked roux before, then you better read this below first.....

More than anything else, it's the roux that gives gumbo its particular character. It was probably used simply because it is so inexpensive to make, while offering a very unique flavor on many levels depending on cooking time.
Some people will tell you that roux is roux, others are almost ritualistic about cooking it certain ways.
Who really knows.....
One thing is certain, newcomers are perplexed by roux, it is simple yet  hard at the same time.....

Making roux is something of an art.
No I take that back--- It IS an Art...

You could describe it simply by saying,
"Put equal parts oil and flour in skillet, turn up heat, stir it until flour gets nice and brown"

However that is easier said than done...

It may take some practice to get good results. Flour and oil are CHEAP! Use an  inexpensive oil, and simply make a few batches of roux to get the "feel" of making it. You can discard them, or save them in the freezer. If you burn it, so what?
Toss it out and start over. (It will get black specs in it, if you see them, you burned it, throw it away)
DO NOT use a roux that you know is burnt, it will taste awful and you will waste your food.

Why Roux Is So Difficult For Beginners To Make Correctly   (if it really is)

"ROUX" is nothing more than equal parts more or less of oil and flour, mixed together in an open skillet,
and cooked until the flour browns to varying degrees of browns and deep reds to deep dark almost black Ya YA.....
Roux tastes completely different at different stages of it's cooking.
Flour after all,  is only powdered seed, roux brings out the nutty characteristics of flour,
bringing to the surface a powerful and very unique flavor that cannot be duplicated.

Roux is ROUX, and dat is DAT......

However, cooking roux is something of an art, because the amount of heat you use, the amount of time it takes to cook it,
and type of oil used, and the amount of flour will completely change the nature of its flavor or cooking characteristics.
It is very simple, but amazingly complex.

It is almost impossible to cook roux the same consistently, and I dont know why you would want to do that in the first place.
The longer you cook roux, the more powerful its flavor.
Sea food is better with a roux that is light, or tan colored, and not cooked too long.
Dark meats, such as duck,  favor a deeper roux, dark brown to deep red (chocolate).
You can cook a roux until it is so dark that it is almost black, which is called Ya Ya, and is great in gumbo, but hard to do.

Here is a list of the different cooking stages of roux and the colors they will attain.

Khaki

Chocolate

These cook times are achieved at  medium to medium high heat,
BUT they are not the only way to cook a roux,
and not necessarily what your times will be.
Paul Prudome, the famous Cajun chef, is well known for cooking a roux in minutes,  if not seconds.
He gets his oil VERY hot.
He also smokes his oil in the process, which many veteran roux makers frown on, citing an additional
burnt flavor in the roux that is not enjoyable to some, and unacceptable using some oils.

Simply put, you have to be GOOD with a skillet to get away with this,  and I wouldn't recommend it.

Also, stopping a roux from cooking like this is hard and even dangerous. Roux is extremely hot oil,
and if it splashes on you, it will burn the CRAP out of you.
Take some advice from the already scarred, DONT stir roux and splash it around!
Stir it firmly but gently, having none leave the skillet.
ONE little speck on your  hand and you will know why I say this!!!!!

The way YOU should do it

The other end of the spectrum, cooking it with a lower oil temperature, and taking as much as an hour to cook it,
is the way most people cook a roux. This is how you should start in your experiments with roux.

Roux is VERY touchy, or it will BURN quite easily. The darker it gets, the easier it is to burn.  When I say burn, what I mean is that you allow the flour to stay in direct contact with the bottom of the skillet long enough to quickly burn it to black in a thin layer, and it only takes a few seconds for this to happen at high  heat. If you do this, that thin layer of black flour breaks up in your roux as you stir it, causing it to have black specks in it from the burnt flour. In brand new light roux, they are easy to see. As roux darkens in the process they get harder to see, but easier to make happen by accident. If you see this, then it is burnt, throw it out...... The flour is supposed to be cooked by the heat in the oil, NOT the heat directly from the pan bottom.
So you must stir it constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY on anything but low heat, to keep this from happening.

NOW HAVING SAID THAT....

As you cook the roux, you will see brown patches of flour as it cooks against the skillet. Sometime even deep brown.
Sometimes even dark brown......if you dont stir it absolutely constantly.
This is NOT burned. This is how it cooks, but if they turn BLACK, and you see a little smoke, then you burnt it.
HOWEVER seeing smoke as you cook roux is common, and you may want to pull it off to the side for a few minutes and keep stirring it until it calms down a bit.
It's a fine line, and only cooking on low heat can prevent difficulty.
This unfortunately takes a lot of time, and as you get better, you push the heat, and push the flour,
push it for time with higher heat and more stir strokes.
The secret is DO NOT STOP STIRRING IT....
A flat wooden spatula is the best for this job, but you can also use a metal spatula or a whisk.
Plastic spatulas melt when you try to use them.... It's HOT stuff!!!!

Today it takes me about 25 minutes to cook a roux to deep red (chocolate).
This temperature is where I am comfortable at.
(Medium high)
You can start out taking longer, in fact I would suggest it, until you get the hang of it..

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT STOP STIRRING IT!!!!!!!!!!

Something that helps beginners

Anytime you see a recipe call for roux, it will call for equal parts oil and flour.
At these proportions, roux gets "dry" half way through the process in a transformation that takes place in the flour,
and immediately gets hard as heck to keep from burning at high heat.
So to remedy this, you can add more oil in the beginning, to make the mixture "wetter" as you cook it.
You cannot add after it is hot, makes a mess.
SO if you wish, to start your first roux, use 1.5 times as much oil as flour.
Then you can just dip it off by setting the roux aside to cool and stirring it until it stops cooking.
Or you can let your gumbo cool and dip it off the final product.

Most Chefs would say there is NO difference, just more oil.
Later you will probably go to equal proportions as it tightens up the time a bit.

Roux oils and further complicating this task......

I used to tell people that what kind of oil you use for this task doesn't really matter taste wise, even though I knew full well
that it matters quite a bit to the gumbo fanatics. Roux is hard as hell to make for the beginner, so I usually recommend an oil that is difficult to burn, such as vegetable oil. It still makes great roux, (and I have used it a lot) and it's easier to do than with others. If you see your oil starting to smoke, pull it off to the side and keep stirring as it cools a bit and then return to heat,  but turn it down a little.

Other oils that have much lower flash points, also have very distinctive flavors,  that they add to the roux and then gumbo.
Bacon fat with a little lard is the old fashioned way, and it certainly makes for a great tasting roux.

Then there is olive oil, peanut oil, crawfish fat, butter, and all the others, that all have their own
distinct flavors and varying degrees of difficulty to use.

Crawfish fat is hands down the best flavor of all, if you can get it,
one of the most outstanding and flavorful oils you can use to make roux.
But BOY is it ever touchy.....
You  have not lived until you have eaten Crawfish Etoufee.

Once a roux has made it to the desired color you wish, you have to stop the cooking process or it will burn if you dont keep stirring it. Some people just pour the hot roux right into the pot of water. Years ago I started chopping up veggies and setting them aside in a bowl, and dumping those in the roux when it was dark enough.
You can also use tomato sauce which yields and excellent flavor.

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