Good Gravy!

I used to say that I’d never met a gravy I didn’t like.  That’s not actually true.  I have met a few and, unfortunately, they keep popping up on Thanksgiving.  I cannot hold my tongue any longer.  It’s time for a public shaming: a gravy shaming.

I think we can all agree that gravy is an integral part of the Thanksgiving experience.  It might just be the best part of Thanksgiving.  There are so many foods, from the turkey itself to all of the starchy side dishes like mashed potatoes, stuffing, and rice, which pair well with a good gravy.  Without gravy it’s like these dishes are naked, but not the good kind of naked like a stripper or the Suicide Girls.  Think nude beach in Alabama: hairy beer guts and missing teeth (and that’s just the women!).

Instead of having a nice turkey gravy to slather over the top of an overstuffed plate of food, we’ve been subjected to a cloudy, lumpy, turkey-flavored gel.  What good is that?  Maybe it works as a shmear on toast.  I don’t know.  Frankly, I don’t want to know.

It’s been stated before but bears repeating: cooking is chemistry.  If you want to know how to thicken dishes, it helps to know a little something about the chemistry of starches.  Frustratingly, our repeat offender, our bad gravy recidivist, is a degreed biochemist.  I hope he takes more care at his lab at work than he does at his lab at home: i.e., the kitchen.  Maybe he just doesn’t know anything about the chemistry of starches.

Starches are polysaccharides: strings of sugars stuck together, specifically glucose.  It’s what plants tend to use for sugar storage.  There are two types of starch molecules called Amylose, which are straight, and Amypectin, which are branched.  You generally find both together arranged in a starburst pattern in a starch granule.  In cold water these starch granules won’t absorb much.  But, when heated, they begin to swell, break down, and then gelatinize.  Heating, and stirring as well, break the intermolecular bonds in a starch granule, and the hydrogen bonding sites are able to engage more water.  Water is the plasticizer in this reaction.

The temperature at which a certain starch will begin to thicken things, the gelatinization temperature, varies based on the starch.  Corn starch thickens when you get to about ninety-five degrees Celsius.  Most of the other starches you’ll cook with hit their gelatinization temperature in about the same range.  That’s why on cooking shows the hosts always say you won’t know how thick your sauce will be until it hits boiling.  So, don’t just dump a half bag of flour in your pot and stir.  Add your starch little by little to see how thick your gravy is.  Also, I would suggest simmering instead of boiling.  Cooking for too long at too high of a temperature will break your starches.  Bring to a boil and immediately drop to a simmer.

So, now that we’ve got a qualitative understanding of starch gelatinization, let’s do some applied chemistry, a.k.a. cooking.   If you dumped your powdery starch, whether it is flour, corn starch, arrow root, or something else, directly into your hot liquid, it’s going to clump up.  You could whisk it smooth, which may be a good exercise for your forearm, but it’s probably not how you want to spend Thanksgiving.  There are better ways of introducing starches to gravies without lumps.

The simplest method is to create a slurry.  Mix your starch in cold water, and then add that mix to your gravy.  When I do this I mix my starch, a tablespoonful at a time, with cold water in a shot glass and whisk with a fork.  I add that whisked liquid to my gravy one shot at a time to see if it is thick enough.  The only drawback to this method is that if you use flour as your starch, you’re going to add a raw flour flavor to your dish that takes some time to cook out.

Another method for adding starches without lumps is to mix your starch with a fat first.  You can make what is called a beurre manié.  Basically, mix your cold fat, usually butter, with a starch until you have a paste, then add the paste to your liquid.  This isn’t cooked before added.  If you do happen to cook it first, you’ve made a roux.

If going the roux route, it’s a simple formula of equal parts fat and starch.  Cook it in a pan, that’s it.  Don’t burn it.  Though the dark roux used in Creole dishes adds a nice, nutty flavor, it actually doesn’t thicken as well as a lighter roux.  That’s why gumbo tends to have okra or filé added for extra thickening.  If you want to use a light or white roux, only cook it for a few minutes, just long enough to cook out the raw flour taste.  Then, mix with your broth.  Make sure the broth and roux are at different temperatures, which will keep lumps from forming.

So, after all this time that you’ve been thinking about starches, you may have noticed that your turkey drippings have separated.  On the top is a clear layer of liquid and beneath that is a colored layer.  The top layer is the separated fat and the lower layer is the actual broth.  You want the broth, but not the fat.  So, skim the fat off with a ladle before making gravy.   If you have the time, put your turkey drippings in the refrigerator or freezer.  The layer of fat will solidify and you can scoop it off like Crisco.  (This, in fact, is a great method to solidify the turkey fat so you can use it in a schmaltz manié)  You can also buy a fat separator at Target for about fifteen bucks.

Once you’ve separated the fat from your broth, it is absolutely acceptable, in fact encouraged, to use that turkey fat to make your white roux or schmaltz manié for thickening your gravy. 

The only other consideration to take into account is which starch to use.  Corn starch or arrow root are essentially just starches, so they will both make clear gravies as well as both having more thickening power than flour.  Corn starch has twice the thickening power per spoonful than flour.  Flour, also, contains glutens, which make for a cloudy gravy.  Let your choice be guided by your desired end result.

Hopefully, the next time I encounter gravy, the cook will understand these simple thickening techniques and will serve me something that is still a liquid.  Alternatively, maybe each guest at next year’s Thanksgiving should make their own gravy: a gravy which pairs with the side dish they brought.  I wouldn’t be opposed to that.  That way, when people tell me I’ve made a good gravy I can parrot that line from the Simpsons: “Oh, thank you.  It’s just brown and water.”   

You’ll know that I’m lying.