Gravy: SEARCH and DESTROY!

And how the hell do they make gravy anyway? I am a gurlie who always haf a packet of MMMMM bisto gravy granules in her food cupboard yet surely there is no GRANULE TREE! Also, S/D gravy ads. Is there any other brand of gravy apart from Bisto? And as for the BISTO FAMILY! Tcccch.

Mutton gravy is absobloodylutelylush! Whenever I order a chicken biriani at my local Sri Lankan curry house, I always make sure I order a side dish of mutton gravy - it comes with the bones still in it, and its flavour is so thick, rich and meaty. And yes, I AM still talking about gravy.

And why is the gravy receptacle called a "boat"? Is the history of gravy steeped in nautical mythology?

Sarah you can now join the legions of righteous anti-chicken gravy folk. I have strict rules on gravy i.e. it must ONLY go on the meat and nowhere near roast potatoes, peas, carrots, cauliflower cheese etc. Also never on chips, beans or what have you. And never on poultry, only red meat. I am not the world's biggest fan of gravy. My dad always offers us spoonfuls of blood (or what polite people call meat juices) when he is carving the roast. Num num. Blood.

Chicken Gravy is the pinnacle of KFC. All gravy is nice, almost.

Gravy is made by deglazing yer roasting tin/fried to buggery onion pan with starchy veg cooking water and reducing it until it's thick enough. Some folks use a bit of flour for thickening purposes, but if you use the water from cooking floury potatoes like I do it's not really necessary.

There's nothing worse than when you see people mixing gravy and tomato sauce on a plate!

Dictionary DoT COM implies it is because it is shaped a little like a boat!

Emma, your rules on gravy are nonsensical! Although I like a bit of blood on my roast too, surely gravy must go everywhere as well. Num, all over the meat and all over the POTATO PRODUCTS. Chips, roasties, mash, gravy and potato is the ultimate match when it comes to food, up there with the CLASSIC bread and butter and spaghetti with bolognese! Am interested to see mutton gravy popping up, mmmm gravy with BONES for flavour. This is like PREMIER LEAGUE gravy and I am embarassed with my mere BISTO GRANULES to call myself a conniseur.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my wuv for RickyT also my gobsmacked amazement that ANYONE KNOWS! Corrrrrrr.

It's all rather confusing really.

Emma, how can you be so wrong! What on earth could be lusher than a fantastic proper gravy (NO Bisto, NO) gently seeping through the crispy skin of a perfectly roast potato, infusing it with the delicate taste of slow-coaked meat? Or do you prefer to see roast potatoes as a challenge, requiring several gallons of saliva to render them moist enough to swallow?

Do you really have a pan just for OIGNONS (as they say in France = culture)? Tomato sauce mixed with gravy you're right, is extremely bad. I don't particularly like gravy on my beans either.

veggie onion gravy (w. bisto, sorry!) over a BIG PILE OF MASH. i am now hungry.

Sarah, you're so misguided to blame the gravy flavour - if the chicken gravy had been prepared by someone with a soul it would've been delicious. Surely the blame lies with the Colonel himself, for cooking up such foul sub-edible trash. That aftertaste!

Search: roast meal gravy, using the dripping and bits from the meat, a bit of flour, some herbs and salt, no granules or other plastics. Save the water you par-boiled veggies in and use it as base. So for veggies, do onions with a bit of oil in the microwave (yes!) then add herbs and stock and flour and use as base potato water, from par- boiling the spud I just got the whole new S Club 7 album yes!

In America they do mashed potatoes with gravy at KFC. I'm sure it is now shite but at the time my mum was going through a Fast Food: Verboten phase and because of this was considered indescribably yummy.

I was brought up in a house where gravy-by-granule was considered more unacceptable than the most unacceptable thing to come out of your ass. To make any gravy it is essential to use the drippings of whatever it is you have just roasted. I like putting shallots and onions and whole garlic cloves in the pan with some olive oil before roasting, with whatever herb is appropriate to the meat. Sometimes a stock cube is nice, drizzled into this mix.

Roast your meat and baste it every 30 minutes if chicken or beef, every hour if turkey. For poultry, stuffing is essential in winter, otherwise use the leftover lemons from making salad dressing or whatever, cut up in pieces and stuffed into bird cavity with garlic cloves you've crushed but not chopped plus a small knob of butter. Stuffing recipes will happen another time, but possibly before Thursday.

But I digress. When the meat is done, take it out of the pan and place it on a warm serving plate to rest up before you go in with the big knife. All the unacceptable schmaltz/beef tallow in the pan MUST BE REMOVED, which I do by placing the pan in the freezer for 10 minutes. You should be able to lift the solidified fat right off. What's left must then have all the burnt stuff/attached bones/bleah! removed from it before you add a can of chicken or beef stock TO THE PAN. Or add some water and salt if you've got no stock. Whisk this mix over simmering heat but don't let it boil, just to break it down. If the gravy looks thin (I like a double-cream consistency) add the TINIEST amount of corn starch to it, like less than a teaspoon, and add incrementally otherwise you will get icky savoury blancmange.

This should then be transferred to the tackiest gravy boat you can find. It's also a good way of killing time while you wait for the meat to cool enough to serve.

gravy boat = icecold gravy quicker

What's that poutin stuff they sell in kfc? It looks like gravy with mayonaisse in it.

I think the secret to gravy appreciation is not being *told* it is gravy, and therefore just eating it or rather dipping your bread in it.

Mark C, obviously your mum didn't make very good roast potatoes or you have false teeth if you cannot manage to bite through a roastie unless it is first soaked in gravy.

I stand by my gravy rules and also my bean juice not going on sausages, eggs or toast rule. You need food rules or else the TERRORISTS HAVE WON.

for veggies:

while frying your veggie sausages (preferably Caudron foods Cumberland) boils a kettle and add two heaped teaspoons of Bisto roasted onion gravy granules to a quarter of a pint of boiling water. Before the sausages are too cooked add to the pan half an onion finely sliced (not diced, I like long bits of onion) and some finely chopped mushrooms. When the sausages are nice and crisp, take them out and add a dash of red wine to the pan, stir quickly to lift the bits (ie deglaze the pan). Add the gravy and let it bubble viciously until thick and gloopy, place sausages next to a huge pile of mash and then pour gravy over all of it.

Yum

Poutin = satanic invention of Quebecois. It's gravy mixed with cheese poured over chips.

I only have vegetarian gravy granules because I don't trust gravymakers to use the nicer bits of cow and chicken.

I use a combination of trad and cheat methods. In the same pan as my sausages, gently fry some sliced onions. When all is done, lift sausages onto plate, leaving onions and scrummy blackened greasy bits in the pan. Add half a mug of gravy (= half a pint of boiling water + 2 heaped teaspoons of granules). Stir vigourously to get all the sticky bits up. Pour over sausages and very buttery mash. Yum.

With sossage & mash it is very important to arrange your sossages in an amusingly phallic way poking out of the mash. Then eating directly from the plate, fellate the sossage for a bit before biting the end off - and then swig some full fat milk from a bottle. This is the gospel on sossage & mash eating.

Emma, are you dissing my mum?

She does make very, very good roast potatoes, but the middle of a roast potato = dry potato, which NEEDS gravy. Perhaps I just have a lower tolerance of potato. Or a life-long passion for proper gravy. Yes.

I don't like roast potatoes. Baked and drowning in butter and pepper or mashed and then cratered to form a receptacle for the gravy.

Okay, stuffing. I use a ratio of 1/2 bread crumbs (leave some brown bread out, then the following day crumb it up in your blender or Magimix) to 1/2 leftover rice. If I'm being posh I add a teacup full of cooked wild rice. To this I add salt, pepper, mixed herbs and a clove of garlic. To that I add lovely Italian sausage which I de-skin and add broad bean-sized pieces of same to bread, rice, seasoning. Then a squeeze of lemon juice to bring out spices, some minced mushrooms, and one mugful of boiling water.

Then I cram the cavity of my bird full of the stuff, hollowing out extra areas under the skin near bird openings if necessary. Then skewer the openings shut and roast bird according to instructions above. Yay! Stuffing! Great when crispy skin attaches to it and even better as a sop for MORE GRAVY.

Poutin is classic. The only place i've seen it on the menu in London is the Maple Leaf in Covent Garden.

sticking sossies in mash a la the beano is deffo classic. sometimes i cheat with gravy (like if it's for over a pie) sometimes i do full on, pretty much following chris' advice above, onion, mushroom, red wine, etc, but THE single most important thing about gravy is that it must have a consistancy allowing you to stand a fork up in it, runny gravy is for FULES.

Steve, you are bang on the money there. Runny gravy = meh

Gravy over everything = GOOD. Chicken gravy = ARSE.

i am not a fan of gravy.

My mum makes roast potatoes that are soft on the middle and crispy on the outside. She does grow the potatoes herself, which she claims makes a difference, ie they taste more of mud. Gravy with mint sauce in is lovely, but truly, oughn't be introduced to potatoes. Ideally, it should be contained in the Yorkshire pudding, like a small mountain lake. That is why Yorkshire puddings are bowl-like.

Normally I tend to concur with suzy on matters culinary, however in this case she is wrong in one minor but significant point;-) Gravy at its most flavoursome is thin, and never should cornflour be put anywhere near gravy as it magically sucks great quantities of flavour from anything it touches. I'm also suspicious of adding stock to the pan juices, it can be done but most stock is inferior in quality to the stuff from your meat, also most of it is probably of suspicious progeny. I would use water, sparingly, wine or in some cases milk (beef on the bone or where a strong flavoured meat has been roasted). This invariably produces small amounts of gravy but it is much more intensly flavoured.

I will concede, however, that gravies are a family tradition handed down from parent to child, abd everyone likes it how mother or father makes it.

the natural receptical for gravy is of course the yorkshire pudding, need I say more. (american biscuits coming a close second, I think)

Berry jams, (redcurrant, lingonberry), are good in pork, (and some game), gravies, add them at the teasing the good bits off the pan stage.

Ed's right - I forgot about the WINE - but as the corn starch is introduced in *miniscule* quantities it's really only there for a slight thickening effect. Any more than a very shallow teaspoon equals flavour killer. Re: stock, always use your own or buy nice organic cubes for the big short cut.

Weirdly, I have never gotten wild over Yorkshire puddings, though I like them. My mum makes something similar (and to me, superior) called POPOVERS which are like the standard YP recipe, but made with butter, which is melted in the bottom of each Pyrex cup used before the batter is poured in, rather than a baking tin like YPs. They have lots of nutmeg and pepper in them and are best eaten with the European Butter Mountain. I don't like them to come into contact with my gravy but this is virtually impossible as the popovers my mum makes are wolfed down within minutes of leaving the oven. They get very tall and look like little baked chef's hats and there are huge air cavities which is where the butter you put on them goes to melt.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must take leave to a) do some work and b) keep the drool off my keyboard.

"Red-eye gravy" is a southern favorite. The recipe: add coffee to hot pork grease. Your peas and ham and potatoes will LOVE it!

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy is unbelievably awesome.

hobnobs or gypsy creams?