Feck it in the Oven, S2E4 - Roux the Day

[smarriveurr]

Greetings, O My Loyal Fans, and welcome back to the Kitchen Gymnasium. Long has it been since the last entry in our illustrious series, and great has been the lamentation. 1 Know that your cries do not go unheard - I am with you in the kitchens. I am with you at the table. I would be with you in the shower, but people are touchy about that sort of

Comments

[firynze]

Now see, I always thought that the eggs cooked IN the mustard sauce, poaching in there...

[smarriveurr]

See, I saw one or two comments about using poached eggs - but in both cases they were talking about poaching the eggs in water with a bit of vinegar - neither poached in the sauce. I think, for the amount of sauce I had, trying to poach half a dozen eggs would be tricky, just space-wise.

Plus, I had to keep whisking the sauce to keep it from separating. With eggs poachin' in there, that would have been a mess.

[firynze]

The weird thing is, mustard is supposed to help sauces BIND. And yet lately, every time I add mustard to a sauce, it breaks. Which is why I haven't tried eggs-in-mustard yet, heh.

[smarriveurr]

The only other mustard sauces I do are either thin (red wine mustard sauce) or a thick one for breading (for the panko pork chops dijon). The mustard + butter mix usually forms a nice, smooth sauce when there's enough mustard in the mix.

I want to say, this case, it might simply have been an overabundance of fat in my roux. This is an area in which I am simply not qualified to guess. There are also some comments to the effect that you should cook the sauce without the mustard at all, but work it in at the last minute, but they were more to the effect of disturbing the flavor. *shrug*

I would totally consider this with poached eggs, though I'm glad I didn't hear about it till AFTER I'd gotten into boiling. This was enough for a first run. ;)

[firynze]

I've had the addition of mustard break something like four sauces and/or hot dressings I've made lately. It's really getting annoying.

I really want to try poaching the eggs in mustard sauce and serving over potatoes, though. It sounds delicious.

[smarriveurr]

Interesting. Maybe something in the particular mustard composition? Change brands recently?

It sounds pretty delicious... just not something I'd want to attempt for a last-minute dinner (which most of mine turn out to be). The hard-boiled approach at least allows me to do the eggs way early, in a leisurely fashion, then everything else can be done in like half an hour or so, if I'm smart.

[firynze]

Nope - same dijon I've been using. All I can think is that there was too much bacon fat.

[smarriveurr]

*nod* Pretty much my theory on my own sauce. We're talking 4 Tbs of fat, plus or minus, and only 2 Tbs of flour, then 1.5 cups of liquid. I must admit, this was pretty much the first time I was able to just add flour to fat and have the flour NOT make a lumpy disgusting mess, so I must have been doing SOMETHING right for a change.

[firynze]

Well, a roux should be about 2 or 1.5 to one, fat to flour, if my father is to be believed...so that would keep it from clumping up on you!

[smarriveurr]

Most of the sites I look at have it at 1-to-1 by weight, and claim that comes to something like 1.5 flour to 1 fat by volume. The most straightforward site had it at 4t four to 1T fat, and compromised on "heaping tablespoon" for simplicity.

I think this success was mainly a combination of finally getting the heat of the fat right, and sifting in the flour. Most of my previous attempts involved trying to add slowly from the spoon, which inevitably dropped a lump of flour here and there. This roux didn't even really need whisking - I just kinda scraped the skillet with the spatula to mix, and it came out smooth in no time.

[firynze]

Ahhh, I scatter my flour in. Which amounts to sifting, I guess.

[smarriveurr]

I try to scatter it in, but shaking off the edge of a heaped teaspoon doesn't do quite the job of distribution that knocking it through a strainer does.