Gravy and all it entails
Sauces and Gravies
Recipes
Cornstarch Gravy
Ingredients:
2 cups of stock
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup water
A dash of kitchen bouquet if desired
Directions
Ensure your stock has enough flavor and bring to a boil. Turn the temperature down a bit.
Mix the cornstarch and water in a separate container and then whisk quickly into the gravy
Add kitchen bouquet if you would like it to be brown.
Hints for cornstarch gravy
You may not want to make a ton of this since if you are using traditional cornstarch, it will get lumpy. If appearances after being refrigerated are important, purchase the modified cornstarch linked at the bottom of the blog. This is what Chinese restaurants use to keep their sauces stable.
Flour Roux Gravy Recipe
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp of butter
2 Tbsp of flour
2 cups of room temp or cold stock
Directions
Cook flour and butter together in pan until it smells like popcorn. This means the starchy flavor is cooked out.
Slowly whisk in stock a little at a time.
Cook until thickened.
Hints for roux thickened gravy
If you have hot stock, cool the roux and add to the hot stock. If you have cold stock, cook the roux and add the cold stock. This keeps lumps from forming.
You can freeze or refrigerate roux if you make gravy or thickened liquid often. If you are using cold roux, as mentioned above, you can just drop the crumbled roux into hot stock or liquid and whisk the mess out of it. (Yes, that is a technical term.)
General Gravy Hints:
Always make sure your stock has plenty of flavor before thickening if possible. If you are struggling with flavor in the stock, consider adding chicken or beef base to enhance it a bit. You want gravy to be strongly flavored to really add to the dish. Be careful with the base, because it has a LOT of salt in it. You can always add more, but you can’t take it out. There is salt free bouillon you can use, however, if salt is an issue with blood pressure or other health concerns. I mention this below, but if you need to enhance flavor without salt, texas pete is where it’s at!
DO NOT FORGET PEPPER IN THE GRAVY. Pepper is a huge help when it comes to enhancing gravy.
This video, while one that I made for Food Science class, so it could be very clinical, is one that takes me back to some key memories in my life. Gravy is very obviously a comfort food, but there is some critical science behind it. Growing up, I loved cooking with my Mima. I wanted to be just like her, which was highly unlikely because I was already taller than her in 5th grade. I was very fortunate to have my Mima with me until after I got married. She taught me my very favorite things to cook. I was “helping” her cook from my earliest memories. Making biscuits and having the last one be a turtle made of scraps. Every birthday cake in our family was Caramel Cake and we all loved it. To this day, if I don’t have caramel cake for my birthday, it doesn’t seem right. My birthday is October 13th and my grandaddy’s was October 16th. I remember us racing to finish my cake after my birthday and before his, because if there was ANY left on his birthday, Mima would put candles on the little end piece of my cake, and we wanted another cake. Making Chicken and Pastry, no not chicken and dumplings, by rolling the dough so thin, you could see the Tupperware brand mat through the pastry and laying the pieces out all the way down the Formica countertop with the metal edge. There are so many incredible memories at Mima and Grandaddy’s house, but the memories that stand out most are Thanksgiving and Christmas. We spent every holiday at their house. Thanksgiving, however, was OUR Holiday. Mima and I loved it. The house smelled so good. We watched the Macy’s parade, and the closer the parade got to being over, the more food the kitchen seemed to spawn. The table was so full at lunch that I’m shocked the table didn’t collapse. Mima always said the best part of the turkey was the gravy. To be honest, I think Mima, Mama, and I could have done without the turkey, but gravy? Gravy was everything! Mima always made gravy by taking the turkey drippings and putting them in a pot, always the same one. Then she took a bit of water, added some cornstarch and stirred it together and poured it in the gravy. Like magic, the drippings would go from a thin liquid to a thick gravy. Then she added some Kitchen Bouquet “for a little color” and it was all finished. Super simple, super easy, absolutely perfect.
Fast forward to 2002. I was an 18 year old college freshman at Alamance Community College. My first class in the culinary department was Food Science. One of the very first, if not the first, labs in Food Science was thickening. We were going to make gravy. YES! I thought, I can do this. I’ve made gravy a million times. (definate exaggeration.) Then there was talk of this thing called a roux. Mixing together equal parts fat and flour and cooking it until the starchy flavor cooked out. Then whisking in chicken stock. I remember a classmate saying, this tastes just like KFC. It was also the day I learned about “my friend Pete.” This was how Ms. Schomberg referred to Texas Pete. To be honest, hot stuff scares me, but I listened to her advice and sure enough, a few drops made the gravy taste so much better. “My Friend Pete is a better flavor enhancer than salt,” she said. It’s definitely true! Culinary school was one of the best experiences of my life. I learned so much in that time about reasons why food did the things that it did, but one of the most important things I learned is “never argue with Grandma.” Ms. Schomberg said that many times. I learned tradition and how to put love in food from Mima. I learned why food does what it does and how to nourish people heart and soul in culinary school.
Every year, as we get closer to Thanksgiving, Mima is heavy on my mind. I would give anything to be back in the paneled kitchen on Elm Street making the food that made me who I am. Waiting for the “turkey to wear off,” before we went up the steps of the attic to carefully bring down Christmas. I will always treasure those memories and visit them often. So this year as we go into a different type of holiday, spend some time recording the memories of past years that you miss this year. One day, these stories that we choose to record will be all that is left of us here on Earth.
Food science note: If you don’t want your cornstarch gravy to end up weird, separated, and chunky, use modified cornstarch. This is what many Chinese restaurants use to keep their sauces consistent. It is more expensive for sure, but since you don’t use much each time, it will last for a while. There is a link below to purchase.
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This is the camera Equipment that I use for my YouTube videos.
Watch this video to learn how even science can bring up so many memories of holidays past.