There are many things I can cook, but I grew in a household where almost no gravy was consumed, so I never learned to make it. Having food allergies, finding commercial gravy I can safely eat is… a problem.
How the heck do I make gravy?
Just the basics, folks. A REALLY SIMPLE recipe, please, I’ll get more elaborate later.
My understanding is that it involves meat drippings (fat, basically), something to do with flour, and stirring/whisking. I actually have some very nice tallow from browning lamb for stew, it would be great if I could convert that into gravy for shepherd’s pie.
Bacon (or sausage) gravy: Mix equal quantities of fat and flour and mix thoroughly to make a roux. Lightly toast it for a couple of minutes. Slowly add milk, mixing thoroughly to prevent lumps. Add the meat back in, along with salt and black pepper to taste. Simmer, stirring, until thickened.
Turkey gravy: Make a roux with some fat and flour. Add the drippings that are not fat and stir until smooth. Add milk, salt and black pepper, and simmer until thickened.
Beef or Lamb gravy: Mix flour into the drippings and slowly add water, stirring to prevent lumps, and simmer until thickened.
Basically, you add a little flour (Wondra is best, but all-purpose will do) to the drippings and cook it while stirring. When it’s mixed and the flour smell has gone away, add water. Add salt/pepper/ etc. to taste.
This will call for practice, be warned. For enough gravy for a typical small family dinner you’d better start with a tablespoon or so of fat - it works a treat if you use the tin you have roasted meat in as there will be BCBs adhering to the tin, and it’s win-win if you incorporate these into your gravy as it not only tastes better but the tin is much easier to clean when you’re done.
Begin, then, with your roasting tin bare of all but the aforesaid amount of fat and BCBs, and add a tablespoon or two of cornstarch or plain flour. Scrub around well with a wooden spoon for choice, then heat and begin to add the stock or liquor of your choice. For some roasts you will have had plenty of non-fat meat juices, and they’re good. If you’ve pot-roasted then you will have that liquor handy to return to the dish, or you can use a stock cube, some of the water you have boiled vegetables in, and maybe wine or beer. Be prepared to experiment.
Add only a little for a while and get the mixture good and hot, still agitating vigorously to detach any BCBs and get them to blend in. Heating at this stage will brown the starch or flour, though be warned, there is a trade-off between browning and thickening. Continue adding liquid a little at a time and keep on or about the boil. Vigorous stirring and adding the liquid slowly will help to mix things smoothly and avoid the dreaded lumpy gravy.
Only experience will show what kind of consistency you and your diners find palatable. But once you achieve this, you can season to taste with salt, pepper, perhaps some suitable herbs, and then you’re good to go. Wine and beer add flavour and you don’t need to worry about the alcohol as long as the gravy’s kept near the boil as the alcohol will boil off before the water.
Gravy can nearly always be rescued with a lot of elbow grease even if it starts to look lumpy, but prevention is better than cure - mix the starch and fat well and add the liquid slowly, blending in well. Too little fat is better than too much, no-one likes gravy with droplets of fat floating around on the surface so be sure to de-fat well to begin with. If the gravy looks far too thin, you can reduce it with plenty of boiling and make a note to use more thickening next time. If it’s too thick you can add more liquor but you may end up with far too much gravy.
Roux is a mixture of fat and flour. Really, ‘roux’ usually refers to a mixture of butter (traditionally, clarified butter) and flour. I was using the word as shorthand for ‘fat and flour’. So in the context of this thread, it’s a mixture of equal parts meat fat and flour. You mix the fat and flour well, and then toast it in the pan to get rid of the raw flour taste. Then you add the liquid (milk, milk and juices, or water, depending on what kind of gravy you’re making) and simmer. The fat/flour mixture (or ‘roux’ in the context of this thread) thickens the gravy.
A roux is basically just a mixture of flour and fat. He is telling you to first make a roux by mixing your fat with flour, then turn it into gravy by adding water and simmering.
The way I usually make gravy and will probably earn me black looks from everyone else here is to mix a little bit of cornstarch into a cup or so of milk, add it to the skillet I cooked the meat in and heat it over medium heat while stirring constantly. Salt and pepper and throw it on the table. I find cornstarch is a lot less likely to get lumps in it and I’ve never had gravy as part of a leftover so its tendency to get gummy is not a big concern for me.
The traditional white sauce is made of equal parts of flour and butter, plus milk. A medium white sauce is two tablespoons each of flour and butter, and then a cup of milk. The sauce may be thicker or thinner, depending on need and taste. If I’m making gravy with the sauce, I usually cook some diced onion in the butter before blending it with flour and liquid. Also, I let the roux cook for a bit to improve the flavor, unless I’m trying to get a very bland sauce.
I frequently use water instead of milk or cream. I also frequently use Better Than Bouillon flavor base, which is sort of a paste of flavoring, and it has to be kept in the fridge after opening. I don’t know if this product will aggravate your allergies, though.
Lamb is flavorful enough to stand up to a quite strong gravy, so you can use beef flavor base with it, or chicken, if you want.
And, of course, if you find you still have a lot of tallow and fat, I’m sure that your birds would appreciate it if you mixed their seed in it, shaped it into small cakes, and let them have a cake at a time.
Brown crunchy bits…the stuff that clings to the bottom of the skillet when you fry something up. If you make your roux in the same pan, you can scrape these bits up while whisking. They add all sorts of wonderful to a gravy.
Get some flour, say a cup or so in a measurer. Also get a glass of cold water.
Put your roaster on a stove burner on medium heat.
If your drippings are watery, add flour and stir to make like a paste. If your drippings are dry, add water to liquify them, then add some flour to stir and make a paste.
From then on, it’s just a matter of adding either flour or water and whisking like a SOB, so you have a liquid that is somewhat on the thick side. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Gravy, simply, starts with whatever sticks to the pan after you’re done with the fist stage of sauteeing.
That means you start frying some protein (usually, meat) in a little fat until it starts to brown, and then you turn down the heat and add some moisture to cook the substance. Or you cook the protein until it’s done first, then take it out and cook whatever sticks after that.
What kind of moisture you add sort of determines what kind of gravy you get. I’m using “gravy” as what I gather is the American usage: “dripping based sauce”. You can make a sauce like that by adding wine, beer, chopped tomatoes, roux & water, roux & stock, plain stock, tomatoes and wine, tomatoes and plain yoghurt, plain wine, coconut cream, sour cream, cream or lots of different kinds of things. Just turn the heat down and add the liquid and let it cook for a few minutes to a few hours depending on the ingredients.
The main idea is to dissolve stuff that would otherwise stick to the pan into some kind of liquid. Usually making the product thick enough to stick to the food. If i doesn’t stick enough, add some more roux, or some tomato paste, or some corn starch or let it reduce for another 10 minutes or whatever.
A decent cook book will have many recipes based on this principle. It’s just a matter of recognizing it.
Another liquid option is the water that you’ve boiled potatoes in (and if you’re making Shepherd’s Pie, you have this) mixed 50/50 with milk. The starch in the potato water will help thicken the gravy so that you may need a bit more liquid.
This is how my granny taught me to do it as a child.
After letting the fat settle, I pour the drippings into a cast iron skillet. Assuming that is 2 cups, I add 3 tbsp of fat and mix 3 tbsp flour with 2 cups of water and make a slurry. Over medium heat I add the flour water mix gradually and whisk constantly. As the mix simmers, the flour will thicken the drippings. After simmering for 10 minutes, if the consistency is correct, stop adding the flour mix. Salt and pepper to taste.
For more gravy, you can extend with water and more fat - and more of the flour water mix. To simulate BCBs, add finely diced giblets, wing meat and some skin.