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Nov. 19th, 2008 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAnd here, we have the NYT making gravy harder than it actually is. For fuck's sake, NYT, it's gravy. Millions of high-school-diploma-or-less red staters can manage this on a pretty regular (and palatable) basis. How hard can it actually be? (Okay, yes, some people suck at gravy. I am not one of them. My kung fu is strong, here.)
Gravy takes about twenty minutes, if you're a n00b. Takes ten if you're an expert. You have plenty of time to make gravy while your turkey is resting following the roasting and prior to the carving portion of the program. There is no need to do ahead.
You will need pan drippings from a turkey, flour, water, salt, and pepper. For materials, you will need a fork and a pint canning jar or other container and a really big frying pan, preferably a cast iron one. You'll also need a free stove burner. If you'd like to go whole hog with it, you will also need to start early (when you put the bird in the oven) with a saucepan and the neck and yucky bits from inside the bird.
Step 0 (for whole-hog overachievers): Take turkey neck and yucky bits from inside the bird. Put them in a medium sized saucepan and add water to cover. Turn this onto boil and let it boil away for about an hour, adding water as needed. Put it in the fridge when it's done boiling and save it for later. This makes stock for you to use to deglaze the roasting pan and help make your gravy. The overachiever uses this INSTEAD OF WATER in step 3. It makes your gravy more turkier (Hell, that's not a word) more turkeyier (No. That sucks, too.) more turkey-flavored (I liked turkier better even though it's not a word.).
Step 1: Remove turkey from roasting pan. I sure hope you used a real turkey (a whole one) instead of just a turkey breast. Turkey breasts don't make pan drippings like they ought to. You get better drippings from a real turkey (and a better carcass for soup stock). If you used a real turkey, you should have nothing to worry about on the drippings front. Real turkeys (more than 12 lbs) make absolutely buckets of drippings, so no worries.
Step 2: Pour all drippings (including the fat, yo) into a large frying pan. Big, see. It has to be big. Look at the drippings in the frying pan. If you have like half an inch of clear grease on top of the drippings, it wouldn't hurt to skim some of that off and discard it. You won't be able to remove all the fat and you SHOULD NOT TRY TO DO SO. Fat is an essential component of gravyliciousness. But some, yeah, some can go.
Step 3: Put some water (a cup or two -- this is not an exact science) or Overachiever Stock into the bottom of the turkey roasting pan and scuff the bottom up with a fork to get all the Burnt Crispy Bits (tm) off the bottom. Do this with the turkey roasting pan on a burner to warm things up. Burnt Crispy Bits are very flavorful and you want them. For realz. This step (if you want to be all chefly about it) is called deglazing the pan.
Step 4: Pour the dirty water (now with BCBs!) into the pan drippings. Hope your frying pan is big enough. I told you to use a really big one.
Step 5: Turn heat on medium beneath the large frying pan and swish things around with a fork. Mash up any egregiously large or solid pieces that you see but don't get all OCD about it. Relax. It's just gravy.
Step 6: Add whitewash to the pan drippings. Whitewash is flour and water mixed until it is white. You take some cold water and you add some flour, see, and you stir it up (using your fork) pretty good until it's white. No, you asshat, you don't measure. Take some cold water, maybe a cup or so, maybe 3/4 of a pint jar. Add some flour, maybe a couple of tablespoons, quarter of a cup. Stir it up good. Does it look liquid enough to pour? Yay! If not, add more water. It should be white like milk, very pourable. It should not be thick like pancake batter. It should not be pale white or see-through. Pour slowly (so that the lumps stay in the jar) and stir as you go with the frying pan (so that the whitewash doesn't congeal on the bottom of the frying pan where the heat is). You can do this MORE THAN ONCE if you need to do so. A big turkey (more than 16 lbs) will probably take half a cup of flour to thicken it, so that's about two batches of whitewash. Note that the thickening power of whitewash is TIME DELAYED so you have to give it time to work. It doesn't thicken all at once. Also, UNLIKE cornstarch, flour gravy will not *break* if you heat it too much or stir it too much. It is robust and will reheat beautifully, too. Use flour, not cornstarch.
Step 7: Cook, stirring, until gravy is boiling. Don't forget to scuff the bottom of the pan as you go along, to prevent congealing. You may salt and pepper the gravy while you're waiting for it to boil. It will take a hideous amount of salt and pepper to taste "right". Note that if you've BRINED your turkey following the advice of some asshat on TV, you may already have drippings that are too fucking salty... so TASTE your drippings before you do anything and TASTE often as you go along. (Just taste using the damn fork you're cooking with. It's going back into boiling gravy. How many germs are going to survive the boiling? You and your germ theory, you worry too much.) Gravy is like soup in terms of the salt and pepper that it requires. Don't be shy, here. Use the big pepper can, the big container of salt.
Step 8: Once the gravy has boiled, let it do that for about five minutes (to remove the raw flour taste). Is the gravy thick enough? If so, you are done. If not, you need to add more whitewash and boil some more. Once you're happy with the thickness and have done your five minutes of boiling, you can turn the heat to low while you dish up the rest of the meal. Last thing is pouring the gravy into boats or bowls or whatever, which you do just before people sit down to eat. HELPFUL HINT: Do not put all the gravy on the table. (This increases your odds of having leftover gravy for hot turkey sammiches tomorrow.)
OMG My Gravy Is Too Thick!!! Add more water, dipshit. If you are an overachiever, you add more of your cooked-ahead-of-time stock.
OMG My Gravy Is Too Thin!!! Add more whitewash. Don't forget to cook five min. at the boil to remove raw flour taste.
OMG Thanksgiving Is Ruined!!! No, it isn't. See, if nobody has killed anybody yet, Thanksgiving is not ruined. Short of an actual murder at your household, nothing can ruin Thanksgiving because you can always say, "Well, at least nobody died*. We can be Thankful for that." If there has been a homicide or similar at your house for Thanksgiving, then you have failed at the holiday. Sorry, but even good gravy will not help you now. Better luck next year, yo.
*If someone dies of natural causes at your Thanksgiving, then you can be Thankful that he or she went to the long dirt nap quicky and in the bosom of friends and family. It's a better death than many people get.
Gravy takes about twenty minutes, if you're a n00b. Takes ten if you're an expert. You have plenty of time to make gravy while your turkey is resting following the roasting and prior to the carving portion of the program. There is no need to do ahead.
You will need pan drippings from a turkey, flour, water, salt, and pepper. For materials, you will need a fork and a pint canning jar or other container and a really big frying pan, preferably a cast iron one. You'll also need a free stove burner. If you'd like to go whole hog with it, you will also need to start early (when you put the bird in the oven) with a saucepan and the neck and yucky bits from inside the bird.
Step 0 (for whole-hog overachievers): Take turkey neck and yucky bits from inside the bird. Put them in a medium sized saucepan and add water to cover. Turn this onto boil and let it boil away for about an hour, adding water as needed. Put it in the fridge when it's done boiling and save it for later. This makes stock for you to use to deglaze the roasting pan and help make your gravy. The overachiever uses this INSTEAD OF WATER in step 3. It makes your gravy more turkier (Hell, that's not a word) more turkeyier (No. That sucks, too.) more turkey-flavored (I liked turkier better even though it's not a word.).
Step 1: Remove turkey from roasting pan. I sure hope you used a real turkey (a whole one) instead of just a turkey breast. Turkey breasts don't make pan drippings like they ought to. You get better drippings from a real turkey (and a better carcass for soup stock). If you used a real turkey, you should have nothing to worry about on the drippings front. Real turkeys (more than 12 lbs) make absolutely buckets of drippings, so no worries.
Step 2: Pour all drippings (including the fat, yo) into a large frying pan. Big, see. It has to be big. Look at the drippings in the frying pan. If you have like half an inch of clear grease on top of the drippings, it wouldn't hurt to skim some of that off and discard it. You won't be able to remove all the fat and you SHOULD NOT TRY TO DO SO. Fat is an essential component of gravyliciousness. But some, yeah, some can go.
Step 3: Put some water (a cup or two -- this is not an exact science) or Overachiever Stock into the bottom of the turkey roasting pan and scuff the bottom up with a fork to get all the Burnt Crispy Bits (tm) off the bottom. Do this with the turkey roasting pan on a burner to warm things up. Burnt Crispy Bits are very flavorful and you want them. For realz. This step (if you want to be all chefly about it) is called deglazing the pan.
Step 4: Pour the dirty water (now with BCBs!) into the pan drippings. Hope your frying pan is big enough. I told you to use a really big one.
Step 5: Turn heat on medium beneath the large frying pan and swish things around with a fork. Mash up any egregiously large or solid pieces that you see but don't get all OCD about it. Relax. It's just gravy.
Step 6: Add whitewash to the pan drippings. Whitewash is flour and water mixed until it is white. You take some cold water and you add some flour, see, and you stir it up (using your fork) pretty good until it's white. No, you asshat, you don't measure. Take some cold water, maybe a cup or so, maybe 3/4 of a pint jar. Add some flour, maybe a couple of tablespoons, quarter of a cup. Stir it up good. Does it look liquid enough to pour? Yay! If not, add more water. It should be white like milk, very pourable. It should not be thick like pancake batter. It should not be pale white or see-through. Pour slowly (so that the lumps stay in the jar) and stir as you go with the frying pan (so that the whitewash doesn't congeal on the bottom of the frying pan where the heat is). You can do this MORE THAN ONCE if you need to do so. A big turkey (more than 16 lbs) will probably take half a cup of flour to thicken it, so that's about two batches of whitewash. Note that the thickening power of whitewash is TIME DELAYED so you have to give it time to work. It doesn't thicken all at once. Also, UNLIKE cornstarch, flour gravy will not *break* if you heat it too much or stir it too much. It is robust and will reheat beautifully, too. Use flour, not cornstarch.
Step 7: Cook, stirring, until gravy is boiling. Don't forget to scuff the bottom of the pan as you go along, to prevent congealing. You may salt and pepper the gravy while you're waiting for it to boil. It will take a hideous amount of salt and pepper to taste "right". Note that if you've BRINED your turkey following the advice of some asshat on TV, you may already have drippings that are too fucking salty... so TASTE your drippings before you do anything and TASTE often as you go along. (Just taste using the damn fork you're cooking with. It's going back into boiling gravy. How many germs are going to survive the boiling? You and your germ theory, you worry too much.) Gravy is like soup in terms of the salt and pepper that it requires. Don't be shy, here. Use the big pepper can, the big container of salt.
Step 8: Once the gravy has boiled, let it do that for about five minutes (to remove the raw flour taste). Is the gravy thick enough? If so, you are done. If not, you need to add more whitewash and boil some more. Once you're happy with the thickness and have done your five minutes of boiling, you can turn the heat to low while you dish up the rest of the meal. Last thing is pouring the gravy into boats or bowls or whatever, which you do just before people sit down to eat. HELPFUL HINT: Do not put all the gravy on the table. (This increases your odds of having leftover gravy for hot turkey sammiches tomorrow.)
OMG My Gravy Is Too Thick!!! Add more water, dipshit. If you are an overachiever, you add more of your cooked-ahead-of-time stock.
OMG My Gravy Is Too Thin!!! Add more whitewash. Don't forget to cook five min. at the boil to remove raw flour taste.
OMG Thanksgiving Is Ruined!!! No, it isn't. See, if nobody has killed anybody yet, Thanksgiving is not ruined. Short of an actual murder at your household, nothing can ruin Thanksgiving because you can always say, "Well, at least nobody died*. We can be Thankful for that." If there has been a homicide or similar at your house for Thanksgiving, then you have failed at the holiday. Sorry, but even good gravy will not help you now. Better luck next year, yo.
*If someone dies of natural causes at your Thanksgiving, then you can be Thankful that he or she went to the long dirt nap quicky and in the bosom of friends and family. It's a better death than many people get.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 05:28 pm (UTC)I only made real gravy once, when I was a kid...I think probably in middle school. The grown-ups were skeerd to make real gravy. I haven't done it since then, so I guess they do it themselves now.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 06:35 pm (UTC)