Good Gravy!
I made a pot roast last night using the method described in my Pot Roast Extraordinaire post, with which I was well pleased. It was a beef roast, and I used a quart of beef stock, without red wine. In the liquid, along with the beef, I had onions, carrots, and various spices, including peppercorns, whole coriander, bay leaves, a few cloves and some fennel seeds. Needless to say, by the time the roast was cooked the liquid was very tasty.
Once meat is done cooking, especially roasts, they need to rest for 20 minutes to half an hour under tin foil to let them cool down slowly enough that they do not lose the juices, and thus the flavor and moistness. So while the meat was resting I had time to make my gravy.
Normally when I make gravy I start by sauteeing chopped onions in butter, and then slowly adding flour to make a roux (fat and flour heated together; like a white sauce without the milk). To this I would add (slowly!) my beef stock, plus juices from whatever meat I was cooking at the time. This makes a perfectly good gravy, but because I already had a flavor-packed liquid at hand, I had the startings of the best type of gravy.
I started by getting my carrots and onions out of the liquid, and setting them aside (the intention was to mix them into some mashed potatoes, since they were so soft). I then strained the spices and loose bits out of the liquid, and I put the liquid into the sauce pan. A wide, shallow pan is best, because the intention is to evaporate one half to two thirds of the water in the liquid, and the more surface area there is, the faster this will take place. When we evaporate water from a liquid, it is called reducing, and the result is called a reduction. A reduction sauce is a very common serving in fancy restaurants, because by removing water you leave behind all the flavor, but pack it into a smaller amount of sauce, thereby intensifying the flavor. This is why this gravy will be so much better than other methods.
When I had the liquid reduced to about a third, I started preparing my thickening agent. Usually the gravy is thickened from the beginning with the roux, as I mentioned above, but since flour will continue to thicken as it cooks you can’t do that with this stuff. So to take its place I mix flour and milk to create a slurry to add to the liquid. A slurry is a liquid with suspended particles which are not dissolved within the liquid. When making a slurry with flour there is a danger of creating lumps. If you get lumps in your gravy it is not the end of the world, but it is not the most attractive nor the tastiest result either. They are also very hard to smooth out once they are warm, since they cook together very quickly. Fortunately there is a very simple method to avoid them in the first place. Put your flour in a tea cop, preferable once with a rounded bottom. I started with about a tablespoon of flour, since you don’t need much to thicken a reduction sauce; reducing tends to thicken the sauce somewhat as the water is removed. To this I added a SMALL amount of milk, and then used a fork to mix the two together into a smooth paste. This is the only time when it will be easy to remove lumps, since the cold milk will do nothing to activate the flour’s gluten, which is the part of the flour that causes it to stick together. Once it was smooth, I added a little more, and mixed it again. I continued to do this until there was enough milk in the mixture that it would pour easily, and then I added it all to the reduced liquid in the sauce pan.
After mixing thoroughly, I turned up the heat to get it to a boil; not a fast boil, just enough to get it bubbling. Flour needs to get to a boiling temperature to fully activate the gluten; this is what makes it capable of thickening the sauce into a gravy. Once it had bubbled for a whil, I turned it down to allow it to simmer just a bit. Since I had so much flavor in it from the pot roast already I knew I would not need to add a lot of flavor to it, but I tasted it and found that it needed a bit of salt and pepper.
My oldest son proclaimed it the best gravy ever, and I have to concur; a reduction certainly does wonders for flavor, and there is no reason I can’t make it this way all the time, even if the liquid did not come from a roast. I can just start with a quart of beef stock and go from there!
By the way, if you make a gravy and are not happy with the color (sometimes it does not darken much, especially if you do not carmelize the roux), here is a little trick to add some color without changing the flavor: add a few crystals of instant coffee! It will darken the gravy perceptibly, without doing anything to the flavor.
I hope some of you will try this and let me know the results; I am sure you will pleased!
Yours in Good Taste,
Erik Christensen