The Book Begins: First Glimpse of What's Inside
Read the Dedication and the Intro
This is the first public glimpse of my roux cookbook—a project rooted in memory, flavor, and tradition. In this post, I’m sharing the Dedication, Table of Contents, and full Introduction.
If you’ve ever missed the taste of home, or wanted to master roux without fear, this book was written for you.
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I had to ditch the working title of the upcoming book. Roux the Day was trademarked in 2018 by a grocery store chain for a meh-at-best promotion.
And I thought I was being original.
So. Slight pivot. Still on target.
It’s deeply meaningful to be able to begin sharing excerpts from the book on this Substack. Let’s start with the stuff that’s deeply meaningful… to lawyers.
Cautionary Note:
Cooking involves the use of sharp instruments, hot surfaces, open flames, and heated oils, all of which carry inherent risk. While every effort has been made to present safe and accurate instructions, readers are solely responsible for exercising caution and sound judgment in the kitchen. Always use appropriate safety equipment and techniques. The author and publisher disclaim all liability for injuries or damages resulting from the use or misuse of the information in this book.
It goes without saying that we live in a litigious society. I’m including that disclaimer here to cover this Substack’s tuchus, too.
I’ve burned myself making roux. Not badly. There’s a small scar on my left hand. I’ve also cut myself chopping Trinity.
There are those who have, and those who will.
Suffice it to say, please be careful.
Dull knives are dangerous knives. Keep them sharp. Don’t force them down. Drag them across. Let the sharpness do its part. There’s a reason guillotine blades have an angle to them.
And roux gets hot—really hot. Don’t think of it as ‘stirring’. Think of it as using the flat part of the spoon or spatula to lift the flour off the pot and integrate back into the oil. Don’t let the flour separate from the oil and settle on the pot surface with no oil to moderate the temperature. That’s why leaving the pot will burn your roux right quick.
Now, the book’s actual first dance with the reader.
Dedication
For anyone who’s ever been afraid to make a roux,
and for every Cajun living far from home:
May this book bring you one step closer
to the flavors you thought you had to leave behind.
Anyone can write a book about roux. I’m trying to write my story into a book about roux. I need to strike the right heartfelt note from the beginning. I think this nails it. It captures my roux story. It moves me. This whole project moves me.
This feeds beautifully into the Intro. But first…
Table of Contents
Introduction: Roux and Memory
Chapter 1: What Is Roux?
Chapter 2: The Types of Roux
Chapter 3: Equipment and Ingredients
Chapter 4: Making Roux
Chapter 5: Roux Troubleshooting
Chapter 6: From Roux to Recipe – Using It Right
Chapter 7: A Classic Recipe That Uses Roux: Crawfish Étouffée
Chapter 8: Roux in Practice - More Recipes to Try
Chapter 9: Next Steps & What’s ComingAppendix
If you see anything I’m missing so far, now is the time. Speak up. Bad news doesn’t get better with age.
Now, the current draft of the intro, updated for this issue of Make a Roux Already.
Introduction: Roux and Memory
“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food.”
—Paul PrudhommeI grew up on roux as dark as the Bayou Vermilion. In Lafayette, when someone was making a dark roux, you knew it before the front door opened. The smell wrapped around the house: nutty, smoky, rich, and deeply toasted. That aroma meant someone was doing it right. Inside, you’d hear the steady scrape of a wooden spoon against a Magnalite pot or a soft hiss rising from battered cast iron passed down through generations. Even now, that smell means home.
Every Sunday, we’d stop by Poupart’s, the French boulangerie, to pick up two loaves of bread before heading to my Mama Dupuis’s house. There’d be roast, venison, and sometimes even robin. Hunted fare from the Atchafalaya Basin was common. That table didn’t need fine china. It had roux. And that was enough.
I may live in Fayette County, Georgia, but I’ll always be from Lafayette. Roux-based Cajun food is a big part of why my heart remains there.
A roux is just flour and fat, cooked until the rawness is gone and the flavor is born. That’s the technical definition. But in Cajun and Creole kitchens, it’s much more than that. Roux is the moment the dish begins. The first story the pot tells.
To understand roux, it helps to understand where it found its voice.
The roots of roux are French, but in Louisiana it took on a life of its own. It got bolder. Darker. Smokier. It became culture. You can’t make gumbo or étouffée without it. Well, you can. But you probably shouldn’t.
Cajun and Creole cuisines both use roux as a foundation, but they evolved in different settings, and you can taste it.
Cajun food comes from the prairie and bayou country, especially around Lafayette. It was shaped by the French-speaking Acadian exiles who settled in Louisiana after the Grand Dérangement, the 18th-century expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia by the British. Many Cajuns are descendants of those who refused to assimilate, building a new culture in South Louisiana from what they had and what they found. Cajun food is resourceful and bold, built around what’s available: roux of any color, the trinity of onions, bell peppers, and celery, and one main protein.
Creole food comes from New Orleans, where French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, and Native American cultures wove together. It’s more cosmopolitan and layered, more likely to include tomatoes, cream, and wine. Creole dishes are often plated with more refinement and attention to presentation.
They’re both dancing the two-step. The rhythm’s just a little different.
I didn’t always know how to make this food. I left home to fly airplanes for a living and found myself in places where no one knew what a proper gumbo was supposed to taste like. I missed the flavors I grew up with. I would cringe when a fellow crew member told me I had to try the “Cajun” place in Timbuk Three. The food would never be authentic. It was merely what the locals thought authentic Cajun food should be.
So, I gave up on finding ‘authentic’ in restaurants far and wide, and started chasing those flavors down in my own kitchen—recipe by recipe, pot by pot.
I read, tested, failed, and kept stirring. I stopped trusting shortcuts from the internet and started paying attention to the way my grandmother moved around her kitchen. No measuring spoons—just instinct, feel, and memory.
That’s when I realized: tradition isn’t about doing things the old way just because they’re old. It’s about honoring the reasons behind those choices.
Blindly following any tradition is, by definition, to do so without vision.
Traditions survive because they adapt. They evolve slowly, with care, and usually one cook at a time. What matters isn’t doing things exactly the way your grandmother did, but understanding why she did them, and knowing when to follow and when to improvise.
If you’ve never made a roux, you’re in the right place. This book doesn’t assume you’ve done this before. That’s the point. You’ll learn what it is, how to make it, how to recover when it goes wrong, and most importantly, how to feel confident doing it again and again.
If you’ve made a roux before, this book will give you depth and detail. You’ll discover when to add the trinity and when to wait, how different fats affect flavor and texture, what roux does to a pan sauce or a custard, and how color changes everything.
Here’s how the book works:
We’ll start with the fundamentals—what roux is, how to make it, how to use it well, and how to fix it when things go sideways. Then we’ll put those fundamentals into practice with a few tested recipes that show how different roux colors behave in real dishes.
Together, we’ll start speaking the language of roux—one you’ll learn to read, speak, and improvise with.
This book blends technique and memory, instruction and instinct. It’s rooted in what came before, but it stays open to what comes next. Whether you’re nervous about your first roux or refining what you already know, I’ll walk with you through each step.
Roux became something I had to master—not just remember. It’s completely learnable. It’s not magic, but it feels magical once you know what to watch for.
Stick with me, and you’ll gain more than recipes. You’ll gain a new way of thinking about flavor and texture—one that stays with you, long after the pot is off the stove.
This book is for anyone who’s ever missed the food they grew up with—or wondered why their gumbo never quite tastes like home. It’s for Cajun expats rebuilding flavor from memory. It’s for roux-fearers tired of burned batches and confusing instructions. It’s for flavor-chasers who know something’s missing, but haven’t known what. And it’s for those who carry the culture forward, one pot at a time.
If that’s you, thank you.
Cooking is memory. Cooking is connection. You don’t need a French last name or a cast iron heirloom to belong here—just a willingness to stir and pay attention. So grab some oil and some flour, take a step closer to the stove, and see where we end up.
What This Book Is, and What It’s Not
This isn’t a restaurant-style cookbook, and it’s not a museum piece either.
It doesn’t chase precision for its own sake or preserve tradition just for showy traditionalism.
It’s a practical guide for real kitchens, real ingredients, and real people.
It’s grounded in lived experience, not culinary school. It was written to teach, not impress.
Whether you grew up with roux or just learned how to spell it, this book will meet you where you are, and help you go farther than you thought you could.
I hope that hooks you. If this introduction resonates, let me know. Leave a comment, share the post, or just tell me what you’d like to see next. The book is in manuscript form now, but the journey’s not over. I’m editing, testing, and preparing to shoot photos. If you’d like early access, updates, or a look at the recipes in progress, stay tuned. I’d love to have you along.
Let me know what you want to know. The ‘Leave a comment’ buttons are always ready to help. All ideas are welcome. This poll can get things started.
Beautifully written!