Gravy, Gravy, Gravy. (AKA, Roux.)

Gravy is like a liquid symbol of my culinary values. It is delicious, decadent, savory, artery-clogging rich; anybody who devotes themselves to gravy must either accept an ovoid body shape or an exercise routine. The best gravy takes time and care, and rewards it in kind. In essence, gravy is bread made liquid with meat fat, meat juice, and milk -- like everything that's good about scraping a piece of baguette through steak leavings, but so much better.

The basic chasis of gravy is a roux -- one of the traditional French sauces. Getting chummy with roux opens up a number of options. It just. Keeps. Getting. Better. Read on!

The Roux

A roux is flour fried in fat, diluted with a liquid; the exact fat and liquid can vary broadly. (The flour is less optional -- use unbleached all-purpose, always.) After the flour has been thoroughly cooked in oil (and the oil thoroughly taken up by the flour), liquid can be mixed in to create a thickened sauce with neither lumps nor a layer of free-floating oil. A roux tastes like what its made from; using fresh butter and milk yeilds a bland, white sauce perfect for creamed tuna, or as a base for mac'n'cheese. Conversely, making a roux from bacon grease or the drippings from roasted meat, thinned with stock or more pan drippings, makes a rich, full-bodied sauce, ideal for slathering on... well, nearly anything. (Caution: test on a hidden corner of carpet to check for discoloration, texture, and mouthfeel.)

Your basic technique goes like this:

1. Assess your fat. You can use nearly any fat you feel like: fresh butter, bacon grease saved from breakfast, schmaltz from a chicken. (I feel like the idea of olive oil gravy is inherently gross, but if any of you out there in Internet Land try it, let me know.) I've made canola-oil based gravy for vegans. There are very, very few instances where your fat is already in a good pan for gravy making, but it can happen -- when I pan-fry chicken, for instance, I usually just pour out a little oil, then make gravy with what's left. This brings up two points:

• The chunky/crispy bits of stuff that are the byproducts of a lof of cooking are highly desirable in gravy. If you've just roasted a bird, scrape every little thing you possibly can out of the roasting pan. That said, the ideal time to add them to the gravy is with the liquid, not the fat. If you're using a pan you've just, say, seared a couple steaks in, I recommend deglazing the pan before starting the gravy. Put the pan on worryingly high heat, give it a second to juuuuuust start smoking, then pour in a half-cup-or-so of white wine or stock -- even plain water will do, if its all you have. Whisk furiously while this burbles for five or six seconds, then kill the heat and scrape everything into a bowl. That stuff is pure flavor. Trust me. (You can apply this same technique to the pan you roasted your chicken in If And Only If your roasting pan is safe to put on the stove top. If so, use a rubber spatula to try and clear out as much oil as you can before heating and deglazing.)
• Make sure you're not using a foolishly large amount of oil.  Notice: if I've been frying something and am going to use the leftover fat right away, I often pour a bunch of it off. I do all my measuring using the How Much Looks Right system, but at the thickness of gravy I make I usually need about a tablespoon of fat per hearty serving of gravy.

If you're using the various liquids that have exited your bird/roast during cooking, you'll have a combination of fat and other stuff to sort though. There is a tool for this: the fat separator. If you've any intention of making gravy a member of your household, go out and get a fat separator -- it'll look like a measuring cup with a spout hooked to it at the bottom of the cylinder, not the top. With this, you can let the various fluids rest for a minute, then pour what fat you need into the pan (it'll settle to the bottom of the cup -- perfect!). That accomplished, the remaining stuff can either be saved or poured out, leaving the liquid available for use later on in The Process.

Your fat, being thoroughly assessed, should now be in a pan over medium heat. Now is the time to add flavorings of any kind desired; a favorite of mine is caramelizing onions in slightly-too-much-butter, then removing the onion before the next step. (This also works very well with mushrooms.)

2. Cook in your flour. I usually go with 2-3ish tablespoons of flour per tablespoon of fat. In this stage, you want your roux to look unnervingly like plaster -- I add flour a bit at a time, whisking furiously, until the whole deal sticks inside the basket of the whisk. Remark the image below; this is perfect. Also note one of my favorite implements: the pan whisk, conveniently shaped to, well, whisk things in pans. Whisking really is key, here; nobody likes lumpy gravy, and having fat evenly distributed through the concoction is part of what helps you achieve that.

Once the flour and fat are incorporated, knock them back out of the whisk and let them cook for a bit. I don't let this go for very long; too much cooking at this stage seems to encourage a gummy gravy. I usually forget to have any liquid on hand; letting the roux cook for as long as it takes me to go get my liquid of choice seems to work very well.

3. Time for Liquid. For gravy, I usually use all the pan drippings I have on hand, plus a combination of stock and milk. For creamed tuna and the like, milk only. For mac'n'cheese sauce base, white wine and milk augmented with a touch of heavy cream. One way or the other, the "right amount" of liquid has to do only with the desired thickness of your product. I usually start at about a cup of liquid per serving of gravy -- "start" being the operative word; I usually go north from there, at least a little ways, because I like a slightly thinner sauce.

Much noise has been made in the past concerning adding only pipping-hot liquids to your gravy, lest you encourage lumpiness. I have never once worried; I have only once made lumpy gravy. Most of my liquids are, at the very warmest, room temperature -- and often my milk is straight out of the fridge. I believe the secret to smooth gravy is adding liquid slowly and stirring like a drugged maniac. Seriously. Make sure all liquid is abso-freaking-lutely fully incorporated before adding any more, and add no more than about a quarter cup at a time, at first. At first, you'll be frantically trying to beat liquid into globby, spackle-y lumps of roux; this is messy and annoying, but will, eventually, work. The liquid will vanish. Very little will change. Persevere! Keep adding, keep whisking. At a certain, magical point the whole thing will relax; no longer will the roux exist only as a tangled mass caked in your whisk. This is the point at which slightly more liquid can go in at a time -- the more liquid you add, the more liquid you can add, savvy? I go until about here:

You're done whenever you want to be, whenever your gravy is at the stage you want it to be at. I make a lot of vegetable-based gravies -- sauteed mushroom or caramelized onion or such. Now is the time to stir those lovely additives in. Check for seasoning; your gravy probably needs both salt and pepper.

4. Eat it like you know you want to. This stuff is good. In fact, it's much too good. I often make a little less gravy than I think I need, just to inhibit my own intake, slightly.

A favorite trick of mine:

I love Better than Boullion. It is amazing stuff. If you don't have the storage space to keep stock on hand, this stuff is the answer. Best of all: for gravy making endeavors, you can thin the roux with water, then stir BtB into the gravy-to-be directly until full flavor is achieved. For the win!

Some basic combinations and applications:

1. Meat gravy. By now, this should not be mysterious. Use fat from an animal and flour; thin with mostly stock, but some milk (to improve mouthfeel, dontcha know).

2. Vegetarian gravy. Either: caramelize onions in too much butter, remove onions, make roux, add onions back in (thin with milk and veggie broth), or sautee mushrooms and use a pretty analagous process. (For vegan gravy, use canola oil.)

3. Mac'n'cheese base: for fat, cook minced onion and garlic in butter. Add flour, cook, and thin with milk and white wine. Add an embarrassing amount of shredded cheese (sharp cheddar, parm, fontina, mozzarella, in whatever combination suits you). Cook until everything is molten; stir in Dijon mustard. I'd aim for 2 cups of roux base per pound of macaroni, with 8-12oz of cheese melted into the roux. Apply to a baking dish full of cooked noodles, top with bread crumbs, bake (~425), eat! (For a vastly more precise recipe, check out the Gourmet cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl. This is just a basic blueprint, y'know?)

4. Creamed Tuna: Okay, I love this stuff when I'm sick. 2 tablespoons butter, 1/4 cup flour (I believe...), thin it with milk (and maybe a touch of cream). Cook in a can of tuna (I prefer chunk for this, honestly -- but in water, not oil) and some peas. Serve on toast. As mild a supper as ever existed. Also works with chicken.

Enjoy, eh? This is a good trick. Let me know your variants!

Comments

[Bether]

Dude, pictures are always good on a food blog. Keep 'em coming.