open cans.
Homemade gravy is a must at Thanksgiving, and four different sources of flavor combine in my method to make a very rich turkey gravy. You have homemade chicken stock in your freezer, right?
Start with the neck and giblets, they are flavor #1.
Brown them, cover them with vegetable scraps and your best homemade chicken stock, then simmer for a couple hours. The stock is flavor #2.
At the same time, prepare your turkey. I cover the breast with sterile cheesecloth to keep it from drying out in the oven. Brush the cheesecloth with melted butter.
Now into the oven, where it will start to brown.
Baste several times and eventually it will look like this. Peel it off.
Drop the cloth into your stock pot and simmer for a few more minutes to release flavor #3.
Baste your turkey with the pan drippings and put it back into the oven to brown. Now run your stock through sieves and toss out the cheesecloth and the solids.
Nice and smooth?
Great. Now we’ll thicken it until it coats a spoon. Melt more butter, maybe 3 tablespoons. This is not health food.
Add cornstarch to form a bubbling roux, 2 or 3 tablespoons should do fine.
As the roux picks up color, dump the hot stock in stirring madly to eliminate the lumps.
Is your turkey done? Take it out and save the pan drippings, flavor #4.
Pour that right in too, through a sieve to catch the solids.
Now stir and taste.
Whoa.
sodahead
