Silver Case

I made a tan roux tonight as a base for tomorrow’s turkey gravy.

To make a roux you put equal parts butter and flour into a pan and whisk it until the flour cooks and darkens along the gradient from blond roux to tan roux to ‘brick’ roux. I wanted a medium or ‘tan’ roux, which requires about 30 minutes of vigorous whisking in a cast iron skillet. I had about 1.5kg (4pounds) of flour and butter cooking, so it was a lot.

I finally finished the roux and poured it into a pyrex container for tomorrow. In the meantime, I wondered how the roux tasted, so I ran my index finger along the bottom of the skillet, scraping up some left-over roux.

So the skillet is probably 180F still, if not more, and the roux is basically a heat-retaining napalm of fat and starch.

So, yes, I burned my finger quite badly. I somehow manage to do things like this frequently.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Food.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.