How to Make Pan Gravy

JoshOzerskyI have a very elemental view of food and cooking: "sure bets" about sums it up. I'm a purist who believes in white toast, strong coffee, wood over coal and coal over gas, live fires and dead animals, and the Shinto-like purity of a perfect hamburger.

An essential on the holiday table, Josh Ozersky’s turkey pan gravy, starts with the bird’s meaty dregs and ends with a beautiful homemade sauce.See MoreTranscriptHi. I'm Josh Ozersky, Rachael Ray's buddy. And this is eHow.com, where I'm going to be making turkey gravy. This is a pan and it has all the vegetables and all the drippings from the turkey. You get it hot, pour in a little bit of wine here, a little bit of stock, Rachel's Chicken Stock of course, and as it boils, you sort of scrape up all of the scraping bits. It smells good too. Now this is now ready to get poured off. I just wanted to get the scraped on. I just wanted to get the stuck on bits into the liquid. So, I'm going to strain this out like so. All right. So, you'll see that I have like all these like little smashed vegetables. I'm going to smash them even further. I'm going to smash these down and get their essence out of them, all that carrot essence and onion essence and celery essence, which is where all the flavor comes from. It's gotta get in there, ya munza. So, I squeezed the last of the vegetal essence out of here. And then I discard this. This is kind of a classy way to do this. So, I'm going to put this over here. And this object is one that I have found very helpful. This is what they call a gravy separator. It is specifically for this purpose. It's a measuring cup with a spout that the beginning of it is low. So, you add in all of this stuff. What's going to happen is I'm going to add all of my stuff in and I have a lot of grease in here along with all that stock and fluid and so forth. And essentially what's going to happen is the fat is all going to rise up. And when the fat rises up I'll be able to pour out the liquid part and then I can.. it sort of separates it out, hence the name, so that I can use the fat to make my rue with and then the liquid I can add in. Just what I wanted rather than it being kind of a nasty greasy mess. All right, so basically the fat had separated out and it's an easy matter now to just basically get that part that I like, which is to say.. oh my god, see I'm watching the meniscus here, I don't want this to get too low, I think that's good enough. You know what, it's a little bit.. let's get that out so we get mostly all liquid. All right. And then, what I basically want now, is some fat in this pan. So, I'm going to pour in a little fat, maybe a little bit more. And I'm going to make, this is what they call a rue. I know this is.. this seems hard and challenging. And I'm not going to say that it's not hard, or challenging. But it's very doable and you have to do it to make a good gravy. Like a gravy is one of those things where it's like the one that comes in the can is bad and the one that you make, even if you totally screw it up, is good. Unless I mean something really catastrophic happens, which is very well might. And that being said, I've got, well it looks like there's a couple of tablespoons of fat there. So, they say that usually it's like a tablespoon of fat, for a tablespoon of flour and you kind of work it around. It's all nutty like this. And then you add back in the juice. So, there's a little bit at a time, and now a little bit more, and now a little bit more. And so, what's happening now is that my gravy is beginning to thicken. And they always say that you want to have the bottom of the spoon, it should stick to the bottom of the spoon. And so it has. You see there like that, bottom of the spoon. But I have to keep moving it and getting it off heat because otherwise, it's going to get way too thick. Add in a little bit more liquid, keep that going. The big thing with gravy, it is.. a lot of people say, oh, well you know, I'll put the water and whatever, wine, stock. Gravy's got to get seasoned too. Gravy is bland a lot of times. Gravy should be peppered. I mean the salt, you got a lot of salt. The stock has got salt in it. You make a turkey anyway I do, the turkey's got a lot of salt in it. And the fat, the pan fat has got a lot of salt in it. This is coming along kind of nicely. And now, just to kind of go to that extra place, let's whisk in a little bit of butter. Because gravies really love butter, and butter loves gravy. All right. So, it's as simple as that. What could be easier. Well, many things, but this came out good. I'm very happy with it and the great thing about it too, is you could always start over. In this case, I didn't have to. What am I going to do now? I'm going to put it where it belongs, on that white meat turkey. So, the white meat turkey comes over here, dry as always, despite all of my.. all of my precautions. But here I have the saving grace, gravy. It covers a multitude of sins. So, turkey gravy, it's as easy as that. I'm Josh Ozersky, Rachael Ray's buddy. And this is eHow.com.CommentsLindsayNov 24, 2011I add 1 tablespoon of cranberry jelly to my turkey drippings and get a great top note flavor to my holiday gravy.LindsayNov 24, 2011I add 1 tablespoon of cranberry jelly to my turkey drippings and get a great top note flavor to my holiday gravy.mikedossettNov 22, 2011Just how my parents make it - the best! Thanks, Josh!Cultured Carnivore: Videos (45)

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