Thursday, November 8, 2012

Making a good gravy


Mama had a rule of thumb that she used to make gravy.  If the dripping from the meat were just fat, she added flour, stirred and slowly thinned it with meat stock or other liquids.  She sometimes used the water she poured off after steaming vegetables if the vegetable flavor wasn’t too strong and would alter the flavor of the gravy.  She was trying to recapture some of the nutrients lost in the vegetable water. 

If the meat drippings have water in them, she made a paste with flour and water and then slowly added it to the meat drippings.  You will still need to thin it with the things mentioned above.  It’s really easy to make a good gravy and it’s one of my favorite parts of a meal. 

My favorite gravies are turkey, pork roast and lamb.  Nothing better on mashed potatoes, rice or corn bread stuffing than a good gravy.  Warning, do not use those packets included with your turkey.  In MHO, they are nasty tasting.  

As you can see, I'm pondering food today.  It's my favorite thing about the holidays but then...as I've told you before, I don't eat to live, I live to eat!

6 comments:

Coreen said...

After a nasty day of snow...about
6-7" here, slippery driving yesterday, it is a much better
day...roads are drying out & much
easier to get around...

It took everyone by surprise, since it was only supposed to be
about an 1"....the weather people were talking about high winds & flooding, neither of which occurred, but the snow kept coming & made for treacherous driving...

Coreen said...

Unfortunately NY/NJ continues to
have serious problems with the lack of electricity being restored in large areas...

Luckily in CT the vast majority got it back & the snowstorm has not caused extensive outages...the
leaves on the trees are gone, not like last Halloween when they still had most of them...

Coreen said...

Have you been able to touch mother cat yet Carol....seems as if she is at least staying near when you are around...

As far as the kittens hissing, would think that if they get the time to get used to you, that will stop...

Have you considered what you are going to do with newest furfamily members...

jan said...

Coreen, good to hear you did not get high winds and flooding this time. Stay safe.

Carol said...

Glad that everything is OK with you Coreen. I think that the public officials were not very responsible telling folks around there that most of them would have power back quickly. Where I live is 60 miles from the gulf and we were hit pretty hard but most of us had a structure to come back to. Even so, it took over 3 weeks to get the power back at both of my places.

Carol said...

Mama feral cat doesn't let me come close to her. She watches me like a hawk. When her food bowl gets close to empty, mama will come up toward the porch, if I'm out there, to let out a little meow and then run back.

I'm not playing with the kitties yet just watching to make sure they are OK. I keep my distance.