Turkey Gravy

LJ and I have made the trip over the mountains (via train, which will be discussed in a future post) to spend he holidays with our parents.  Since arriving at my parents there has been a constant clamoring for new blog posts.  I assumed the vast majority of page views were coming from my dad (a great friend of the blog, GFOB) refreshing his browser a work and home every few minutes to see if any new shout outs to him made the blog, but now I know for sure after seeing him check this blog as I sat next to him on the couch last evening.

The last time we visited my parents was over Thanksgiving.  My main responsibility each Thanksgiving is to make the gravy from the turkey drippings so I decided to document my process.

I make a roux from butter and flour a few hours before the turkey is set to be done because the roux needs to be cool since the turkey drippings will be warm.  Since there is a 20+ year tradition of the turkey going in before 6 AM at my parents this means the roux is started as soon as I finish eating my cereal in the morning.

Ended up with a dark roux

The roux going in to the fridge to cool

Before the turkey has completely finished cooking I pour off some of the juices in to a kettle where I simmer it with peppercorns and bay leaves as the turkey finishes cooking.

When making the gravy I try to remove as much of the fat as possible.  I strain the drippings to remove any solid bits along with the peppercorns and bay leaves.  I then add ice cubes to cool the drippings and solidify the fat at the top.

 

After removing fat from the top I add the drippings to a fat separator.  Since fat rises (physics in action: liquids with different densities) the separator has a spout from the bottom.  You simply pour the drippings slowly out until you reach the fat layer which you can discard.

Once the fat is mostly removed I returned the drippings to the heat and slowly whisked in the roux.

I reserved some drippings in case the gravy needed to be thinned.

It turned out that I had an over-abundance of drippings, and since I try to make as much gravy as is possible, I needed to add some additional flour to thicken the gravy.  I added the flour (technically Wondera, which is mostly just flour) to a small amount of the gravy to avoid any lumps and then added the mixture to the gravy.

Admiring the perfect consistency