Gravy — the real Mother (and Father) sauce

Clas­si­cal­ly trained chefs, please stop read­ing this col­umn now.

OK, you’ve been warned.

In clas­sic French cook­ing there are five moth­er sauces, as first set forth by Marie-Antoine Carême and lat­er revised by Auguste Escoffi­er: Béchamel, Velouté, Espag­nol, Toma­to and Hollandaise.

These are called moth­er sauces because they’re the start­ing point for hun­dreds of sauces. James Peter­son gives over 300 sauce recipes in his book, Sauces: Clas­sic and Con­tem­po­rary Sauce Mak­ing, oth­er books on the art of sauc­ing also have sev­er­al hun­dred sauce recipes.

Most home cooks have made a cheese sauce from a white (Béchamel) sauce base and a sauce can become a main dish, like Turkey A La King or that clas­sic Army stand­by, creamed chipped beef.

A few years ago I got to think­ing about gravy. What is gravy?

Peter­son clas­si­fies it as a ‘jus’, but think­ing about it, a gravy is made from a starch, usu­al­ly either wheat flour or corn­starch, a fat (the drip­pings) and a liq­uid, often the juices from the meat, which are sim­i­lar to a stock.

OK, I thought, on the moth­er sauce tree, gravy should be under Velouté. Or if your moth­er made milk gravy for chick­en, it’s a vari­ant on Béchamel. What­ev­er it is clas­si­fied as, it’s the most fre­quent­ly made sauce in most home kitchens, so it’s some­thing we should strive to be good at.

So, before the cook­ing police descend upon this site for debas­ing their art, let’s talk about gravy.

I love gravy, don’t you? Mashed pota­toes seem point­less with­out gravy, and a splash of gravy will perk up near­ly any meat and com­ple­ment many side dishes.

I took over the gravy-mak­ing task in our kitchen some years ago, because I find it fair­ly effort­less to make, and my wife says my gravy is far bet­ter than hers, so she’s per­fect­ly con­tent to let me make it even if she does the main course, which these days is also infre­quent. (I used to work from home but am now retired, she works at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka dur­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic year, so I took over most of the cook­ing tasks about a decade ago.)

But I cheat a lit­tle. I don’t just use the drip­pings from the pro­tein (beef, chick­en, turkey, goose, duck, etc), I sup­ple­ment them a bit by start­ing with a white (but­ter-and-flour) roux. Then I add in the drip­pings for fla­vor, and final­ly I add stock, either made from today’s pro­tein or pre-made. Start­ing with a roux base prob­a­bly makes my gravies more like a clas­sic velouté, which should appease the kitchen police some­what. (You ARE still read­ing, aren’t you??)

If you make some­thing that releas­es a lot of fat, like a duck or a goose, you may want to let the drip­pings sit to cool and sep­a­rate. Oth­er­wise you can wind up with too much fat and not enough starch. You want rough­ly equal amounts of fat and starch to make a roux. A wheat flour based roux made from a table­spoon of fat and a table­spoon of flour will thick­en about a cup of liq­uid. Corn­starch is slight­ly bet­ter as a thick­en­ing agent than wheat flour, so a table­spoon of corn­starch (usu­al­ly done as a slur­ry rather than a roux) will thick­en about a cup and a half of liq­uid. Pota­to starch is even stronger.

If you have to wor­ry about gluten issues, you can use oth­er starch­es in place of wheat when mak­ing a roux, such as rice flour, tapi­o­ca flour. arrow­root or gar­ban­zo bean flour.

In On Food and Cook­ing, Harold McGee ranks the starch­es as thick­en­ing agents in this order, strongest to weak­est: Pota­to, tapi­o­ca, corn­starch, wheat. My own exper­i­ments sug­gest that the list should con­tin­ue with arrow­root and gar­ban­zo bean with rice flour at the bot­tom. Brown rice flour seems to have a bit more thick­en­ing pow­er than white rice flour, but I think it adds a harsh or bit­ter flavor.

I make beef, turkey and chick­en stock in large quan­ti­ties and freeze it, I also have goose, duck and veal stock on hand. (Some years ago I tried my hand at mak­ing demi-glacé, but that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er day.)

My freez­er bailed me out last Thanks­giv­ing when I dis­cov­ered that the turkey breast I was mak­ing (there were just 3 of us so a whole turkey seemed like overkill) did­n’t have any giblets or a neck, so I just thawed out a pint of frozen turkey stock. Hav­ing stock avail­able also comes in handy if you use cook­ing meth­ods that don’t cre­ate many drip­pings, like a grill. I haven’t done any sous vide cook­ing yet, so I’m not sure whether it pro­duces true drip­pings or not.

Late­ly I’ve been deglaz­ing the pan drip­pings with a lit­tle ver­mouth, or some­times some sher­ry. Using an alco­hol to deglaze a pan has the advan­tage of dis­solv­ing the drip­pings (also called the fond) bet­ter, then you cook (most of) the alco­hol off before you add it to the gravy. I haven’t decid­ed yet if I like sweet or dry ver­mouth bet­ter for deglaz­ing, I’ve got both on hand.

So, armed with drip­pings and stock, your starch of pref­er­ence, some ver­mouth and a stick of but­ter, it’s time to gravy up!