re: Roux. Anybody else do this

I do the Donald Link fried chicken gumbo method, which has you use chicken with skin and bones and lightly fry it, use that oil for your roux, then drop the entire pieces into the gumbo to slow cook once the stock is incorporated. Remove the chicken towards the end, pull off the skin, remove the chicken from the bones then add just the meat back. Really great gumbo.

OP I fried a bunch of chicken Friday night. I have a fryer that has has two baskets and holds a decent amount of oil. Nothing fancy but it does have a temperature adjustment and does what I need it to. After I fried up all that chicken in peanut oil I put the lid on it and turned it off to cool down and clean later. Saturday afternoon I drained and strained the oil. It was only used once. The sediment stuck on the bottom after I drained the oil out looked like a roux. I tasted it and it tasted like a roux. I've always used the strained chicken oil to make my chicken and sausage gumbo roux. But as I was scraping that roux looking stuff off the bottom of my fryer into the garage can I was thinking the same thing that it sure looked like a roux and it wasn’t bitter but I've never tried to use that before as my roux. I don’t think your crazy I know exactly what you are talking about. Bare in mind my oil was only used once and was strained the next day. To me what I was throwing away had the consistency of say a roux in a jar. It looked just like a roux in the jar to be more descriptive. OP what I scraped into the garage probably could have been used as a gumbo roux but I've always been scared to try that because I don’t know anyone personally that’s tried to do that.

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Why wouldn’t you make your roux pure and use $1 worth of fresh flour?

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Did I say I was going to use it as a roux? No. I stated I use the oil from the fried chicken when I make a chicken and sausage gumbo. I did note what I scrape out of my fryer and into the garbage can looks like roux out of the jar after it’s cooled down and hardened up overnight. I also noted I can understand the OP’s curiosity if that would work for a roux but I’ve never tried to do that before for the exact reasons you noted. I make my roux the normal way: oil, flour, stir. It does peak my curiosity on how bottled roux is made that I see in these grocery stores.

Since the OPs thread is not going as planned I thought I’d toss this out for what I’m going to try maybe this weekend.

I been trimming the fat off boneless skinless thighs (fam don’t love the fat like I do lol). I take that and render it down for some chicken tallow (Schmaltz) and been storing it in the freezer until I have enough to make my roux. I get the big packs from wallmarks and I can get about a 1/3 cup of oil when it’s done.

Reason for me is I know putting whole bone and skin on chicken in the gumbo imparts a great flavor, but I loath digging out chicken parts when I eat. I know, put it in a bag or some shite…but I figure the flavor from rendered chicken fat and bone stock should cover me. I’ll use it for other chicken dishes that needs oil as well like stew.

Bonus toss some Cajun seasoning on it when it comes out the oil for some crackling.

Start in a cold pot on simmer and stir.

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I’ve seen the grocery store bottled roux made in processing plants. They use jacketed steam kettles with a mixer to heat flour and oil. Then they pour it into jars. Pretty simple.

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Interesting. I’d love to see such an operation out of curiosity.