It depends on what meat or poultry you are serving it with, how much effort you want to put in and so on.
But I make gravy for red meat like this sometimes:
Make your stock in advance by simmering roasted meat bones with vegetables etc for a few hours). You can sieve it and the freeze it in advance.
Gently fry some finely chopped shallots, carrots and celery in a pot.
Add some stock and reduce.
Add red wine to the roasting pan which had the roast meat in it (which is now resting) to deglaze it and scrap the bits of the bottom.
Add this to the stock and reduce.
Remove the bits.
Just before serving, pour in any juices from the resting meat.
Whisk in a little butter and serve.
There are much simpler variations of this and you can add cornflour to the vegetables rather than reduce the liquid so much and so on.
Other people will make it a different way. Other gravies are made in a different way.
I’ve had Bratensauce from a packet served to me in restaurants here - the chef has shown me the packet. That’s why I mentioned it before.
Not that I know Tom’s recipe, but I doubt it will be much like a béchamel at all. He’s probably referring to the creation of a good stock, which is the basis for what we UK folk call gravy.
Basic recipe is stock+meat juices (including deglazed roasting dish)+wine/sherry/port+cornflour to thicken if desired+spices/herbs as appropriate.
Edit: Overlapped with Tom’s post - similar but not usually as long-winded for us, and I prefer not to add extra vegetables to the stock. Sometimes we put an onion in the chicken to roast then chop some of it finely into the gravy, sometimes we might do similar with a lemon.
Not really. my SIL is coeliac and cannot eat gluten. I asked the chef whether the gravy had flour in it and he said he didn’t know and went to get the packet.
I think she was implying that the chef was a weirdo for bringing the packet out to show you.
Without the added context of your SIL’s health condition it did seem like a bizarre thing to do.
That’s an easier way of doing it remove the meat from the roasting tin to rest, add cornflour to the tin to make a roux with the fat/juices from the meat, and then add stock/wine and reduce.
Lots of cook books show it this way.
I understand the bechamel thing now - American white gravy is exactly how you describe it. I’ve never had it.
There are almost as many ways to make sauces as there are chefs in the world, but a UK roast dinner gravy would never start with a roux. I’ve seen some people, Delia Smith springs to mind IIRC, put flour in the meat pan with all the fat and do it that way, but most people I know would drain off most of the excess fat and keep for other uses later.
[quote=“Tom1234, post:149, topic:1412”]
American white gravy is exactly how you describe it. I’ve never had it.
[/quote]IMHO, there is one really gorgeous place for this–Southern fried chicken with biscuits and gravy…song from my father of his Charleston upbringing. I generally do not do Southern food, but for this I’ll make an exception, along with shrimp & grits done properly.
They may keep doing the gravy they know and love, show the packet to that kind of customer. Finance people push chefs to accommodate to the needs of every customer but these are not happy chefs. So, not a surprise if a chef reacts in the most passive-aggresive way.
We went a long way from KFC. What “gravies” do they serve?
I think there clearly is a place for gravy and it depends on the meat. Certainly loads of gravy with long roast meats where you get the gravy almost as a by-product of the roast. Special gravies for specific meats - like horseraddish sauce with Tafelspitz. With steaks or other short roasts, I can do without gravy but then like a dip like chimichurri or so.
Oh goodness, it’s like you don’t really know the Swiss… I think the guy just took the question very seriously and didn’t want to talk out of his arse and went on to check out the packet and also convince their customer they’re safe. There’s a lot of passive-aggressiveness in some daily interactions here but not under these circumstances.
I think the guy just took the question very seriously and didn’t want to talk out of his arse and went on to check out the packet and also convince their customer they’re safe. There’s a lot of passive-aggressiveness in some daily interactions here but not under these circumstances.