The Roux Rules Everything Around Here

Ask ten Louisiana cooks about roux and you'll start eleven arguments.

A blond roux is butter-soft and gentle — it belongs under an étouffée, where crawfish should taste like crawfish. Push it to peanut-butter and you're in court-bouillon country. Take it to dark brick, right to the edge where it smells like toasted hazelnuts and trouble, and you have the backbone of a proper chicken and andouille gumbo.

The rule in my kitchen: never walk away from a roux. Not for the phone, not for the doorbell, not for anything. Forty-five minutes of stirring is the price of admission.

When we cater your event, that patience comes with us — every pot of gumbo we serve started on a stove hours before your first guest arrived.