Wednesday, September 12, 2007

How to make a rue

Last weekend when I posted my recipe for Mac n Cheese I promised to write a little bit about how to make a rue.

It's a few days late but it's here...my basic recipe on making a rue. A rue is very easy to make and extremely versatile. The most popular things that you can use a rue for is gravy or soup. But in reality a rue is a thickening agent because it's a flour base. What that means is that you can thicken any liquid with it to make the sauce or gravy. For example, if you make a rue and add chicken stock to it and stir until the stock and rue is incorporated and heated through it will turn to a nice gravy. Add some sauteed mushrooms and you have mushroom gravy. Add cheese to it and you have the base sauce for macaroni and cheese. You can also add mustard and it makes a really good mustard spread for sandwiches. You see, it's all about the method. You can get as creative as you want for a variety of dishes.

So without any more hesitation here is the recipe:

olive oil, one turn of the pan
3 pats of butter
3 tbsp flour
1.5 - 2 cups of stock or milk (see HINT below)
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the butter and stir in with a whisk. When butter is melted, add the flour and whisk the flour in with the butter until the flour cooks fully and no longer looks white. The flour might clump up but that is ok. Add the liquid and whisk to incorporate until all the lumps are gone and the sauce starts to thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once the sauce is at the desired thickness remove from heat and add to the dish you are making.

***HINT*** If you want to make a milk based rue or gravy (for mac n cheese for example) then use milk as the liquid. If you want to make a stock based rue or gravy (like for chicken or turkey gravy) then use chicken stock as the liquid.



Bon Appetit

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just used your rue recipe to make a delicious parmesan cheese sauce for our dinner of raviolis. My 18 months old is extremely picky. When I put the sauce on he ate the whole thing! Thank you very much. I'll be using it a lot from now on. It was so easy. :)

Anonymous said...

I'm terrible at making rues I've tried making them several times I used this recipe to make chipped beef for my picky hubby and son they ate every bit of it I'm saving this recipe for future recipes... Thank you sooo much.

Downee said...

I used your way to make a seafood macaroni au gratin. AMAZING!!! Thanks a mili.

Bigbadcliff said...

Used your recipe in a mulligatawny soup....perfect! Much thanks.

Anonymous said...

Confusing, recipe is measures in pats of butter and flour in table spoons but in video its a couple table spoons of butter and only 3 teaspoons of flour. What is a pat of butter anyhow? researched it and no one seams to know, its like what they used in the world war or something. Still helpfull.

Anonymous said...

A pat of butter is one tablespoon...where I caome from :)

Anonymous said...

easy, one pat of butter = 1 tablespoon

Anonymous said...

Key Note: if you are using a metal whisk, make sure it is a pan you do not care about to make the rue

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