2For66

November 25,2015

If you are panicking about Thanksgiving tomorrow; you can make this gravy tonight; I’ll walk you through it.

I made this same gravy last year the day before Thanksgiving. I’m posting again, because it is such a handy recipe. My extended family loves gravy at Thanksgiving. Since my Bro-in-law deep fries one turkey I can’t make enough gravy with the drippings of my roasted turkey. So, I made an all purpose gravy today as a supplement. I grabbed this recipe from  America’s Test Kitchen – it’s their free site so no charge, though you will have to register. They even have a video. A copy with my notes and measurements is here.

This uses a combination of beef broth and chicken broth – one can of each. For Thanksgiving you could use two cans of chicken stock. Oh, it’s better to make your own chicken stock; but you probably don’t have time. Make sure to get low sodium.

I used the food processor to chop up the mirepoix (mixture of onion, celery, and carrot); if you don’t have one, just chop things fine. It doesn’t have to be as fine as what I did.

Melt the butter and sauté the mirepoix for about 7 minutes.

Then add the flour and and stir constantly. It’s best to use a wooden spoon to stir constantly and scrape up the bits of flour that will want to stick to the bottom of the sauce pan and burn. Then slowly whisk in the broth. Add the spices: peppercorns, bay leave, and dried thyme. It will start to smell like Thanksgiving.

Simmer the gravy for about 20 minutes until it thickens slightly. Then pass it through a fine mesh strainer to catch the vegetables and spices. You’ll have a velvety smooth sauce that folks will rave about.

It will thicken up in the refrigerator overnight, but heat it up a bit and it will be fine.

Tomorrow after the turkey is done roasting I’ll make another bowl of gravy – true turkey gravy then.