Coq au vin: I roux the day.

This is a pretty elementary question, but othes may have more experience in this particular area than I.
Made a Martha version of coq au vin, which seemed pretty straightforward. Sauteed a lot of bacon. Use the fat to sautee onion and mushrooms. Add 3TB flour, cook that for a couple of minutes, then add in all the wine and the marinated, browned chicken pieces. Bring to simmer and finish in the oven for 45 min. at 325.
There is no instruction or caution about stirring while it cooks, nor would that be very practical as the pot is full of large pieces of chicken.

Problem: In her intro to the recipe she talks about it cooking down to a "velvety" sauce. Hence the flour.
But when I took mine out of the oven, the very aromatic and tasty sauce was pure liquid. Nothing velvety about it. I figured maybe the 3TB of flour wasn't enough or something. The dish tasted fine. Then, when I got to cleaning out the pot (no surprise here for the experienced among us), there was all my flour, sitting in a layer on the bottom of the pot. (A nice heavy enamel over cast iron.) What should I have done differently to keep my roux from sinking?

I think what happened is that your flour caked together when you added it, producing a mass of raw flour that was sealed together for the entire cooking process. Liquid couldn't penetrate it.

When you add the flour, do these things:

1. Make sure there isn't liquid in the pot. Fat and food is ok. But you don't want liquid in there just yet.

2. Don't dump it all into one place in the pot. Sift it around the food in the pot.

3. Once you've added the flour, use a wooden spoon (or something) to mix it around the food. You want to evenly coat the food with the flour and you also want to cook the flour a bit before you add your liquids. Keep it moving a bit while you cook it, so the flour doesn't burn. You should get a little browning on the flour. Then add the chicken and liquid.

Notes: 3TB of flour will be enough. As you suggested, don't stir once you've put it in the oven.

Also, try adding your liquid in slowly, and stir it into the roux, THEN add the chicken.

Adding already hot liquid helps avoid this problem too. You can heat the wine and/ or stock on the stovetop or in that god-foresaken contraption: the microwave oven. On another note, I really don't like or see the need for flour in braised dishes. If the sauce is too thin when the meat is done, you can just remove the meat and reduce the liquid until it's the consistency and flavor you want. Whisking in a little butter at the end for a more velvety consistency is an option too. I greatly prefer the flavor and texture of flourless sauces.

While the flour was indeed well stirred and mixed with mushroom and onion before wine and meat were added, all the other bits of advice (like pre-heating the wine, wisking it up before adding the chicken, etc. make great sense, and are, on reflection pretty obvious. Can't really believe I didn't do it just by reflex. Thanks all.

I recently purchased some Wondra flour, which I think is especially fine (as in opposite of course) and I makes a very nicely thickened gravy. Surely it's not necessary, but I've enjoyed using it.

I also made Coq a Vin recently, so this is all fresh in my mind.

The stirring of the flour in the fat is to make sure that each of the flour granules are separated and covered with fat before you pour in the liquid, and then each separate grain can soak it up for a thick sauce. You need to stir it constantly for the entire time it is cooking in the fat, its not enough to pour in the flour and stir it around, and then leave it to cook for a few minutes. It wasn't clear from the original post whether you did this constant stirring, or just added the flour, stirred around some, and left it to cook.

If the flour clumps together, my guess is that it is because the flour was not sufficiently stirred around to get completely coated by the fat - so only the outer edge of flour gets soaked, swells up, and keeps the rest of the flour dry since the wine, in this case, can't penetrate deeper.

I recently had success making oxtail stew where I merely dusted all the oxtails with flour before searing and braising them; I did use Wondra flour (also useful for dusting cake pans) Lovely thick gravy. My inclination is that you need to keep the flour away from liquids until it's well soaked in fat.

I've tried Beurre manière as well, though it's not as good as a roux - usually if I have to thicken something after the fact I use a cornstarch or potato starch slurry (not my favorite; I don't like the goopy nature of plant starch gravy.)

That's exactly right, MHays. Unless you are prepared to fully incorporate the flour and cold liquid together before introducing them to the dish, it is best to have the flour thoroughly mixed with fat before introducing the liquid.

If the flour ended up at the bottom of the pot after cooking, it almost certainly wasn't well incorporated when it was first added. As I said earlier, the flour should be mixed with fat and thoroughly stirred in the cooking pan, before adding liquid.

Adding the flour, then liquid, then whisking will work, but you have to use cold liquid and you have to whisk a lot. A real lot! Warm liquid tends to speed up the coagulation of the flour. Mixing the flour with fat, but not liquid, is much easier and much less risky. Then whisk to insure the flour is evenly distributed and not clumping. Cook a little bit to get rid of some of the raw flour flavor. Then add the liquid.

For more details, see page 617 of "On Food and Cooking," by Harold McGee.

mrbarolo wrote:Add 3TB flour, cook that for a couple of minutes, then add in all the wine and the marinated, browned chicken pieces. Bring to simmer and finish in the oven for 45 min. at 325.

The problem may be right here. Flour thickens liquids only at much higher temperatures and it needs to be brought to a full boil for a few minutes, perhaps before adding the chicken. No amount of stirring will cause the flour to thicken if it was only brought to a simmer.

Another option is to omit the flour initially, remove the chicken after the 45 minutes in the oven, and then add the flour and bring it to a boil at that point.

I completely agree with kennyz, though, in that the sauce for coq au vin, or most braised dishes, shouldn't have to rely on flour as a thickener. Try reducing instead after the chicken is fully cooked and you should end up with a thick velvety sauce.

kanin wrote:The problem may be right here. Flour thickens liquids only at much higher temperatures and it needs to be brought to a full boil for a few minutes, perhaps before adding the chicken. No amount of stirring will cause the flour to thicken if it was only brought to a simmer.

I am not so sure about this. The temperature difference between a full boil and a simmer is not that great. Besides, flour starts thickening at around 150 degrees. You may be thinking of corn starch, which needs to be boiled to thicken.

Darren72 wrote:I am not so sure about this. The temperature difference between a full boil and a simmer is not that great. Besides, flour starts thickening at around 150 degrees. You may be thinking of corn starch, which needs to be boiled to thicken.

Flour starts to thicken at below a simmer, since it will start absorbing water at that point, but it doesn't fully incorporate itself into the liquid until it reaches a full boil. It will settle to the bottom eventually if there's isn't enough heat.
Boiling cornstarch will actually cause it to thicken momentarily, then thin out, and you'll be back where you came from.

In any case, using a reduction is what I would do for coq au vin. Working with rouxs can be tricky :)

Darren72 wrote:Cook a little bit to get rid of some of the raw flour flavor. Then add the liquid.

For more details, see page 617 of "On Food and Cooking," by Harold McGee.

Speaking of getting rid of the raw flour flavor, roux are used extensively in Cajun cooking not just to thicken, but also for flavor. The longer you cook the flour in fat, the darker the flour gets and more intense the flavor, but thickening also decreases since the flour won't absorb as much liquid. For some Gumbos they will cook the roux until almost black - up to 20-30 minutes of cooking and constant stirring - for flavor, and then make a second light roux for thickening. Paul Prudhome goes into this with some nice pictures in Louisiana Cooking. At any rate, its always necessary to stir the roux constantly while initially cooking in fat to avoid clumping later.

I have read that this dish is much better if made from an actual rooster. Not sure if true, but I would like to try it!

There is a great chapter in It Must Have been Something I Ate about Coq a Vin.

brandon_w wrote:There is a great chapter in It Must Have been Something I Ate about Coq a Vin.

Now I remember where I read that!

brandon_w wrote:There is a great chapter in It Must Have been Something I Ate about Coq a Vin.

Here's an excerpt:

http://lumsden.west-bend.wi.us/IMHBSIA_RedWineAndOldRoosters.html