Brown Roux

This is a staple of Cajun cooking.
Soon, we'll have a Crawfish Etoufee recipe. You'll first need to have some roux ready. Roux is a cooked combination of flour and fat (either butter or oil). Its used as a sauce base, flavoring, and a thickener. A traditional light roux has equal parts flour to oil, but a brown roux will use less fat/more flour due to the effects of longer cooking.

8oz Cake Flour
4fl oz Canola Oil

Preheat oil in a non-stick skillet a little hotter than medium. I set my electric stove on 6 for this. Pour flour in and CONSTANTLY stir with a silicone/rubber spatula. Cook for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 5 and cook 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 4 and cook 10 minutes. By this time the roux needs to be at least darker than peanut butter. If it isn't that dark, keep cooking and stirring until it is. The most important part of this is: NEVER STOP STIRRING. If any bit of it burns, it will ruin the whole batch of roux. Let cool and freeze for later.

Why cake flour? Because it has the lowest protein and highest starch, which are the properties needed for roux. All purpose flour will still work, but dont use bread flour.