I love gravy and have often commented that it should be a beverage. Maybe I’ll even get a sweat shirt with that printed on it, although it might be more becoming on someone thin.
We ate a lot of gravy at our house when I was growing up – fried chicken gravy, baked chicken gravy, turkey gravy, beef gravy, pork gravy, and red eye gravy – yum! Mother did not make fried fish gravy, but Del’s Aunt Hattie did. I’ve also heard of tomato gravy and chocolate gravy, but I’ve never eaten either.
I don’t recall Mother having a recipe for gravy. It was more a process and differed somewhat based on the meat. If she was baking (roasting) something in the oven, she usually browned some flour by putting it into the oven in a pie tin when cooking the meat. I remember you had to peek at it and give it a stir every so often or you would have nasty smelling burnt flour. Once the meat was done, she would pour off the drippings into a small bowl and spoon off the fat that rose to the top.
Depending upon the amount of gravy she planned to make, she would return equal amounts of drippings and browned flour to the roasting pan and stir them until well combined, scrubbing up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan as she stirred. Then she would pour in about a cup of water or broth for each two T of drippings. She would stir until the gravy thickened up and add salt and pepper as needed.
When Mother made gravy for meat cooked on eye of the stove, she poured off the drippings, leaving a couple of tablespoons in the pan. She would then add in an equal amount of regular flour and cook, while stirring and scraping, until the mixture was a nice caramel color. Again, she removed as much fat as possible from the reserved drippings and added them and enough water or broth to make a cup to the pan. She continued to cook and stir until the gravy was as thick as she wanted it to be. Some people use milk when making fried chicken gravy, but never did as far as I remember.
Turkey gravy
Turkey gravy is a more elaborate process, so I’ll number the steps.
1. Remove packets from both ends of the turkey. It’s gross to cook a turkey and discover that the packers left a present in the neck end as well in the nether region. I know whereof I speak.
2. Cover neck and everything except the liver with water and simmer until done. When cool enough to handle, coarsely chop gizzard and heart and return to broth. Refrigerate until needed.
3. If you use Mrs. Williams’ method, you need to boil 2-3 eggs.
4. When the turkey is done, pour off the drippings. Return 2 tablespoons to roasting pan for each cup of gravy you plan to make. Add an equal amount of plain flour and cook until light brown, stirring and scrubbing up the brown bits. Remove as much fat as possible from the reserved drippings.
5. Combine reserved drippings and the broth with the chopped giblets. Pour one cup per 2 tablespoons of flour into roasting pan. Cook until thickened. Mrs. Williams would have coarsely chopped the boiled eggs and added them to the gravy at this point. I don’t do that, but I don’t find it objectionable.
6. If you don’t have enough liquid for the amount of gravy you want, add water or canned broth.
7. If you have extra liquid, use it when you make your dressing. Otherwise, you can use canned broth for that.
Red Eye Gravy
I can’t think of a better, or much less healthy breakfast, or dinner, really, than an egg fried so hard nobody would eat it but me, fried country ham, plain grits, homemade biscuits, red eye gravy and apple butter. If you want the gravy, you had better learn to make it yourself, because I rarely find it in restaurants. Del, who calls it “grease,” thinks this is as it should be. Bless his heart.
Recipe
Fry thin slices of old fashioned country ham over low heat until brown on both sides, but not hard and crunchy. An iron frying pan is best, but not mandatory. Remove ham from pan and keep warm. Remove some of the drippings unless you want to make lots of gravy. Pour ½ to 1 cup of water, depending upon the amount of drippings, into the pan and use wooden spoon to scrub up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook 2 minutes or so until bubbling, slightly reduced in volume and reddish in color. Some people add half water and half coffee, but Mother never did that.
As suggested, serve with fried eggs and the ham and biscuits. You can put a spoon of the gravy on your grits or you can split your biscuit and pour the gravy over it instead of using butter and apple butter. That is a hard choice, so maybe you should have one of each. A large glass or two of ice water, blood pressure pills and an antacid would be the appropriate chasers for this meal, and it certainly should NOT appear on the table very often.
Nowadays, we don’t eat gravy often, and when we do, I try to defat it as much as possible. Often I just pour off all the drippings and pat the pan with a paper towel, being careful so the brown bits remain in the pan. Then I pour in a can of broth and thicken with a little cornstarch. To avoid lumps, stir a couple of tablespoons of water or cold broth into a tablespoon of cornstarch. Add the slurry to cold broth. If the gravy does not thicken enough, make more slurry. This time put a little of the hot broth into the slurry while stirring and then add it to the hot mixture, whisking to avoid lumps.
That pretty much sums up all I know about gravy. Now if I could just figure out the difference between gravy and sauce. I've always suspected sauce was just a fancy word for gravy,used by chefs who considered gravy low class, and later adopted by the rest of us to describe that which is poured over more sophisticated dishes. (Or in these days, requested “on the side.”) Even after consulting my faithful expert, Google, I still don’t understand the difference. So much conflicting info for what seems a simple question. Help, anyone?
In my family tradition, a gravy is drippings thickened with a starch while a sauce is either cooking liquid thickened by reduction or separate ingredients combined heated and thickened by reduction (and perhaps enriched at the last moment by some added butter).
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