Butter, oil or bacon juice?

I see you read another post. :P
 
Any fat works. Idea is to cook the flour. If using butter it should be clarified or you risk burning. Oil can make a silkier roux than animal fat, but animal fat adds richness. Personally, I grab the oil out of ease. Richness can be added later.
 
A lot of Cajun cooking is out of necessity, if you are cooking bacon, use the fat. Etc etc. I've noticed "authentic" recipes change family to family etc., and there is never one "real" way. Which I think is really cool! No neapolitan pizza or BBQ purists! lol.....
 
mostly clarified butter/ghee but occasionally bacon fat or smaltz(rendered chicken fat) .
 
  Smaltz is a great cooking fat but no where around here to buy it, so I only have it whenever we buy a lot of chicken to break down for the freezer and I render the trimmings myself. 
 
I will hoard a little jar  of that for special dishes for weeks afterwards. 
 
I bought a quart sized canister for rendered bacon fat, and we only buy a raspberry-chipotle soaked bacon from the butcher, so we only have that brand of bacon fat for cooking....
 
...On that note, I can't keep the quart canister half full.... :twisted:
 
We have oil and butter, but tell me, you guys make roux with that?
 
     I have always used oil because of the high smoke point. Brown butter is good, but in small quantities, imo. (Whenever I scramble eggs, I brown the butter on purpose to add a little richness.) I never thought of making a cooked roux with butter. I figured it would burn.
     When I use a roux, I usually am doing so more for flavoring than for thickening. For gumbo or etouffe or whatever I try to get it really dark. But if I just want to use some flour to thicken a dish or sauce, I just use a raw room temp butter/flour paste.
 
 
 
edit: I just remembered that if I'm making gravy for roasted meat like turkey or chicken, I just use fat from drippings to make a light brown roux.
 
I looked at the jarred rouxs and they use oil. Understandable of course for a product like that. But some people swear by jarred versions. 
 
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