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Roux is a sauce thickener made from equal amounts of flour and butter (you can also use meat drippings for some recipes).
Generally, per 1 cup (8 oz / 250 ml) of liquid such as milk or broth:
- Thin sauce: 1 tablespoon of flour / 1 tablespoon of butter
- Medium sauce: 2 tablespoons of flour / 2 tablespoons of butter
- Thick sauce: 3 tablespoons of flour / 3 tablespoons of butter
To make, melt the butter in a saucepan, and slowly whisk in the flour. Cook over low heat for several minutes, stirring constantly.
Cook the Roux until white froth begins to appear on the flour, and until it has reached the brownness appropriate for your recipe. If you are making a white sauce, you won't want any browning happening. If you are making a brown sauce, you want to brown it a bit.
As the Roux gets browner, however, it loses some of its thickening ability, because some of the carbohydrates that would be used for thickening have been broken down and used up in the browning reaction process. Consequently, if you are going to brown it, you may want to plan on upping the proportions of flour and butter (equally, of course).
When the Roux is ready, begin whisking in little by little the hot liquid that you are thickening.
Cook the sauce at a very low heat, whisking regularly. You will want to let it cook for at least 10 minutes. When flour cooks even for a few minutes, it develops a starchy taste that will come through in the sauce. By 10 minutes, though, the raw starchy taste will have gone away, and any graininess in the sauce from the flour will have smoothed into a velvety texture.
Part of the rational for using a Roux, as opposed to just whacking in the butter and flour separately, is that as the butter is melted and cooked, it coats the starch molecules in the flour, which will help prevent them clumping together into lumps when added to the sauce.
To thicken sauces at the last minute that are still too thin, consider Beurre Manié.
History
Roux is a French word for red; it refers to when the flour in a Roux changes colour during cooking.
Also called:  Einbrenne, Mehlschwitze (German)
See Also
Beurre Manié, White Sauce
Other entries for Roux
Beurre Manié, Blond Roux, Brown Roux, Roux, White Roux
Other entries for Thickeners
Alginic Acid, Arrowroot, Carrageen, Cassava Flour, Clear Jel, Gelatin, Genugel, Guar Gum, Lecithin, Locust Bean Gum, Lotus Root Flour, Marshmallow Powder, Panade, Pectin, Tapioca, Xanthan Gum
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