I’ve never tried to make gravy until today. I had a vague idea about what went into gravy, so instead of reading a recipe like a reasonable person, I scraped some drippings into a frying pan, along with about a cup of flour and a cup of milk. As it cooked, it formed a thick, pale sludge. I added more milk, and now I have a pan of thin runny liquid boiling on the stove. At some point in all this, I looked at a recipe and realized that mistakes have been made.
If the stuff in the pan cooks long enough, will it brown, or is it too late, since I used way too much flour and didn’t cook the flour in the drippings first?
You made glue. Gravy is typically made with stock, not milk. And you need something like a tbsp of flour, not a cup. Milk and flour are cheap enough that it’s better just to scrap this and make it again rather than salvage something from what you’ve made.
Drippings and an equal amount of flour go into your pan. Cook it, stirring constantly (more or less) until it is the desired shade of tan or brown. Add milk a little at a time, stirring to incorporate. It will be thick, but will thin as you add more. You just don’t want lumps. (Well, I don’t.) Just use an amount of milk appropriate to the amount of roux. Add your seasonings. Cook slowly until it thickens.
If you put the milk in before the roux toasts, your gravy may come out tasting floury.
On preview: Shalmanese, it depends on what kind of gravy you’re making.
You can make "“Southern Gravy” with cream, and fake it with milk. But any “browning” happens when you are doing the roux not after putting in the liquid and it’s meant to end white anyways.
eta:Shalmanese is right that a cup of flour is way too much for a pan fiull of gravy, but wrong that a tbsp is likely enough. Really depends on how thick you want it and how much time you are going to spend on it.
You really don’t need drippings, especially if you are going to make a white sauce/gravy. Just make a simple roux with flour and oil or butter, fry it with CONSTANT stirring for a couple minutes then add milk and seasoning. Add slowly to see how it’s going. It’ll shockingly bind up, or “grip” as they call it, but just continue to briskly stir and add liquid as necessary.
So, I could start this over again with a couple of tablespoons of flour and an equal amount of oil? It’s already 7 PM here, so I’d want it to finish up as quickly as possible.
For sure, if you don’t want to be an absolute purist you can make a white gravy in 15 minutes. Use a whisk for stirring. Simplest quick recipe I found:
Just once you’ve added the liquid, taste it a few times and see if you want to add salt or pepper.
Then put your glue in the fridge, and tomorrow you can sautee some onions, red pepper and broccoli, all chopped pretty fine, and then add your glue, heat it up, and a few handfuls of shredded cheese with salt and pepper to taste. There, you made cream of broccoli soup. You meant to do that.
Milk-based gravy will never turn brown, or at least shouldn’t. At most, you’ll get something tan out of it. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
If you’re aiming for a brown meat gravy, you get the brownness mostly from the drippings and the broth. The roux will brown if you cook it for a long time, but a dark roux is usually the base of a whole dish, not just a way to thicken to a gravy. With gravy, you’re relying on your drippings for that concentrated, dark-cooked, meaty flavor.
As a milk-based substance, I agree with WhyNot that this is a solid base for something. Maybe it could be salvaged into a gravy, but it would certainly be a solid base for a soup. Besides the broccoli soup idea, you could go mushroom soup (saute onions and mushrooms separately then add) or baked potato soup (add potato chunks, and then your choice of cheese, leeks, chives and/or bacon bits).
Browning the roux is frying the granules of flour in oil. Once you add water–or, in this case, milk–the browning stage is over. (I suppose theoretically you could cook all the water back out of it, and it would start again, but you’d be frying a hard lump of glue.)
I’ve never used bacon grease. Chicken, ham or sausage are by far the most common here in Oklahoma. However, now I know what I’m making Saturday morning.
I hate wasting food. I might not win your run of the mill cooking challenge show, but I’d make a pretty good showing if the concept was rescuing kitchen mistakes.
That’s funny, tonight I needed just a little brown gravy, less than a cup, to moisten some leftovers. I brought a cup of beef broth to a boil, with a shake of A-1, pepper, and onion powder. In another cup I mixed a tablespoon of flour and a little water to make a lump-free slurry, and drizzled this into the broth, wisking like mad. I cooked and stirred a couple of minutes till it was a little thickened, and I felt quite proud I didn’t have to run out especially to buy a jar of gravy.
When i make gravy, it’s brown meat gravy. I like it on the thin side, and unless I’m making a lot of gravy, a tablespoon of two of flour is plenty. Yum, gravy.
I don’t think I’ve ever made white gravy, and I’m not crazy about it when I’ve had it. But a roux is a good start for all sorts of sauces, as well as a tasty way to thicken soup.
I’ve made brown gravy for lamb with roux and bouillon from an OXO lamb cube. Add freshly ground pepper and herbs to taste (rosemary, thyme, sage, mint, whatever you like). Whisk in a knob of butter to make it nice and smooth.
