Southern cooking on Beat Bobby Flay is a roux problem. Eleven of the chefs in this chapter beat Bobby because they understood that a dark roux — peanut-butter to milk-chocolate color — is the foundation of gumbo, étouffée, biscuit gravy, and any sauce that requires depth without thickness.
Bobby grills. He sears. He reduces. He does not, by his own broadcast admission, stand at a stove stirring a roux for thirty minutes. The chefs in this chapter do.
Southern cuisine is built on patience. The braise is long, the roux is dark, the smoke is slow. Eleven times, that patience was the win.