Beurre manié is one of the best ways to thicken a sauce or a soup, period. This fancy-sounding mixture—it means kneaded butter in French—is incredibly simple to make and equally easy to use. Just rub enough flour into softened butter to make a thick paste; then whisk in little bits of the paste to finish a pan sauce for, say, shrimp scampi or a roast turkey, or to enrich a seafood chowder.
