How to Thicken a Sauce

It is easy to create sauces, thickened with flour, that do not have a floury taste. The way the flour is prepared before you add it to the sauce ingredients will mask the flavor of the flour so that your sauce is not altered.

All-purpose flour is used as a thickener in sauces that are dark or cloudy in color. This includes white and brown sauces. When preparing sauce with flour, the recipe will tell you to first melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Other ingredients for the sauce follow after this procedure. If, after making the sauce, it is still runny, repeat melting the butter and mixing the flour into it. If you did not already thicken your sauce, each cup of sauce requires 2 tablespoons of melted butter, or oil, and 2 tablespoons of flour. Melt the butter or heat the oil over medium heat and mix in the flour. Add this mixture to your sauce. If you did thicken your sauce beforehand, but still want it thicker, reduce the amount of flour and butter used to 1 tablespoon per cup of sauce. Heat the butter and stir in the flour before mixing it into your sauce.