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Kait over at Kait’s Plate had this sugestion concerning my gravy woes:

I used to make gravy with cornstarch, but when I’d heat up the leftovers it ended up looking like gravy jelly. Not appetizing. Gravy is not supposed to hold its shape like that. Now I make it with a roux instead and it heats up better.

Pointless misspelling of common names asside, she has a point. A roux, for those of you who don’t know, is a mixture of flour and fat. You usually melt some butter in a pan and vigorously beat in a few tablespoons of flour, or if you’re making gravy you can just use the fat in the pan of what you’re cooking.

The nice thing about making a roux before you add the liquid to make the gravy is that you can control how “thick” the gravy is. The more you cook the roux the darker it gets(and the stronger the flavor). The darker the roux the less thickening power it has.

So if I took the exact same gravy recipe I was using, poured about 3 tablespoons of the fat into another pan and then slowly whisked in 3 tablespoons of flower, I’d have a roux. If I let that roux cook until it starts to get dark it will make a more fluid gravy when I add it back to the first pan which will reheat better the next day.

Good looking out Kait. And good looking too

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Bacon in a can you say.., Man Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.