gravy!
Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all canucks out there!
We are having our dinner today instead of tomorrow… and it is my turn to cook. I don’t make gravy because it usuallt turns out bland and thick. Today for the first ( and maybe last ) time I have made perfect gravy.
Mundane and pointless… I know… but a small success for me none the less! 
oops… I thought I was in MPSIMS. Sorry slythe, move me if you see fit :eek:
Move it??
No way, Jose!
I want everyone’s best recipes on the “perfect” gravy. Clear or cloudy. Lumpy or smooth. Runny or thick.
Well?
You’re making me hungry!
I don’t cook, except to open cans, and can’t get a decent canned gravy to save my life. I have to eat at a better restaurant to get one that’s not too salty.
ok, you asked for it!!
I cooked the turkey with a can of chicken broth. Then after it’s all done I strained the juice into a pot and turned it on to boil. When it was simmering I crumbled flour and butter together and mixed it into the broth. The end result was perfect gravy!
Butter, eh? I’m going to have to try that.
Anyway, take a bit of oil and coat the bottom of the skillet. Sprinkle pepper and chili powder. Fry up the pork chops. Add a pint of milk and a tablespoon and a half of flour to the grease in the pan. (You did remove the chops from the pan, right?) Over a medium heat and STIRRING CONSTANTLY (<-- very important!), let the mixture boil. Turn the heat to low and continue to stir for five minutes. Throw away the pork chops and drink that delicious gravy! Or if you must, pour the gravy over the chops and Grandma’s potatoes and CHOW DOWN!
But you’ve got to stir constantly, or you might as well just throw in a handful of peanuts for the lumps you’re going to get.
For more gravy goodness, check out “Big Secrets” by William Poundstone. There’s a great anecdote about Colonel Sanders and the gravy at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Cordially,
Myron M. Meyer
The Man Who
I just finished my Canadian Thanksgiving dinner and I finally got the gravy right this time.
I always used the fat drippings off the turkey (fry flour mixed with the fat in the roasting pan, season it, try and thin it out with water, always end up with very thick fat paste). This time I checked some cookbooks…
Pour off the fat and throw it away. It’s the dark pieces and that dark sticky stuff stuck in the pan you want to keep. Put the roasting pan on a burner, add four cups of water, heat and mix with a wooden spoon to mix in all that dark stuff in the pan. Whisk four or five tablespoons of cornstarch in a quarter cup of water and slowly mix this in to the water in the roasting pan. Keep stirring, flavour with celery salt, garlic salt, lots of black pepper, some Magi, some worcestershire sauce. A beautiful brown gravy, relatively low fat, thin enough to pour.
Another nice new touch today:
One cup water, one cup sugar, mixed well and starting to boil in a saucepan. Add one bag of fresh cranberries ( on sale for $0.65), a couple of slices of lemon chopped up peels and all, a good dash of cinnamon. Boil gently until the berries get mushy. Let cool at room temperature, then put in the refrigerator to thicken. The freshest zingiest cranberry sauce I ever tasted. It’s like a jam and we’ll be eating it on toast for breakfast next week. Supposedly the cranberries will also cure our cancers and prevent bladder infections.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.
Our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday was awesome and I would have to say the most sure fire way to get excellent gravy is to have your sister in law make it. There was hardly a bite of anything left being that we had a “small” gathering of 18 people. Kudos to the chef.
I get to make gravy today as I will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner at work… I make a mean gravy but almost never pay attention to what I do. I almost never use recipes unless I’m baking.
I’ll try and write things down more…
A recipe for gravy? I don’t work with a recipe when it comes to gravy, even though a use or write down recipes for nearly everything else.
However, I found two years ago that the more you reduce gravy the better it is. My grandmother makes gravy by adding flour until it is thick enough, and that works ok, but adding only some flour and standing over the stove stirring until you think your elbow is going to fall off on the floor makes much batter gravy.
Another gravy experiment I tried recently was to mix the flour with wine instead of water (grandmother’s theory of how not to get lumps is to add water to flour and shake it to a smooth consistency before adding it to the hot broth/fat). The wine worked really well, except it evaporated off much more quickly than water. Result was tastier than usual, but the quicker evaporation lead to a slight increase in…not lumps really, but a more “congealed” mouthfeel. White wine worked well for the butter and chicken broth-based gravy. Red wine made an odd color that my testers didn’t like. Red wine in a darker beef gravy was wonderful.
Ummmm…lunchtime.
Clear? Oh, man. I just had a flashback to the old SNL commercial for Crystal Gravy - “At last, you can see your food!” That image of a woman dipping her turkey leg into a jar of clear, viscous goo and biting into it will haunt me forever.
The fool-proof gravy recipe- from a woman who used to make mortar instead of gravy. Secret- make a roux of butter and flour.
First- use pan drippings or stock- DO NOT OPEN THAT CAN OF BROTH!!! It is all salt and no flavor. To use pan drippings, pour into a fat separator- it looks like a measuring cup, only with a pouring spout that starts at the BOTTOM (fat stays on top, get it?).
In a saucepan, melt about 2-3 tablespoons of real butter (salted). When melted, add about 3-4 tablespoons of flour, not sifted or tightly packed. Whisk the flour and butter together and cook until golden, and until it doesn’t smell “floury” anymore. This will prevent all lumps, because each bit if flour is coated with butter, works every time. Whisk constantly while cooking. The deeper the color of the roux, the deeper the color of the gravy.
Now, add your drippings or stock (stock recipe available by email). Whisk until smoothly mixed, then stir occaisionaly while bringing to a boil. Season with salt and pepper, tasting several times during the seasoning & cooking process.
That’s it. Perfect every time.
Oh, and if your pan drippings got cooked down, add a little stock or other liquid to the hot pan, they will come right back. The measurement of flour & butter can vary depending on the amount of gravy you want, you will need to experiment.
And don’t bitch about how hard it is to make your own stock! It simmers all day on it’s own, you don’t help!
I make the best gravy around, homemade soup too. Too bad hubby can’t live on it! But good Chinese always delivers!
[snooty voice]
Gravy you say! You call that gravy?
[/snooty voice]
Please, oh pretty please, drop by the last page of this thread.
Then you shall know gravy!