Simple Flourless Gravy For Your Holiday Feast

You’ve decarbed your holiday dinner: Fauxtatoes, grain-free dressing, sugar-free cheesecake with a nut crust. But without flour or cornstarch, how do you make a Simple Flourless Gravy recipe For Your Holiday Feast?


I can’t give you a hard-and-fast Flourless Gravy recipe since I don’t know how big your turkey will be, or if you may even be serving something else. So I’ll give you rules and guidelines instead.


• If you like giblet gravy, you need to deal with those first, starting a couple of hours before the turkey is scheduled to come out of the oven. Put the neck, gizzard, and heart, but not the liver, in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a simmer and let them cook for a good hour, at least. These bits are tough, and need long, slow cooking. When they can easily be pierced with a fork, add the liver to the pan, cover, and turn off the heat. After five minutes, take the lid off and let the giblets cool in their broth.


• Have the giblets diced and ready to go before the turkey comes out of the oven. Remove them to a cutting board, reserving the broth they cooked in. Pull as much meat as you can off the neck and chop it fine, and cut the gizzard, heart, and liver into small dice.
• Okay, your turkey is done. You need to skim your drippings. Yes, we are unafraid of fat. We are, however, afraid of greasy gravy. Here’s the easy way: Remove your turkey to a platter, and let the juices settle. Pour all of the liquid part of the drippings into a zipper-lock bag, and seal it. Hold it by one corner and let it dangle while the fat rises to the top. Hold the bag over your roasting pan, and snip off the corner with your kitchen shears. Let the drippings run back into the pan until you get to the grease, then grab the corner to stop the flow. Save the fat to cook with, if you like.
• Put the roasting pan over medium-low heat, and add broth or water to the pan–I use chicken broth for turkey gravy. If you’ve cooked the giblets, pour that broth in, too. Any water leftover from cooking vegetables also enriches the flavor, and adds vitamins and minerals as well.

* As the liquid comes to a simmer, stir with a pancake turner, scraping all the nice brown bits off the bottom of the pan. It is this deglazing of the pan that makes for really flavorful gravy.
• Okay, all the yummy brown stuff is dissolved into the gravy. Taste it. Is the flavor rich? If it is, you’re ready for the next step. If not, let it simmer for a few minutes to reduce.
• Time for the stick blender and the guar gum or xanthan gum shaker! (You do have a guar gum or xanthan gum shaker, don’t you? Just get a spare salt shaker and fill it with one or the other. Keep it by the stove.) Get the blender going first. Now sprinkle your guar gum or xanthan gum over the surface of your gravy. Go slowly, and stop when your gravy is not quite as thick as you want it to be; it will continue to thicken on standing, and you don’t want it to become gummy. 


• If you don’t own a stick blender, you can use your regular blender. In this case, it’s easier to transfer only part of the liquid to the blender, make it somewhat thicker than you want the final product to be, then add it back to the rest.

* If you over-thicken, do not panic. Just add a little more broth, and figure you’ll have extra gravy for the leftovers.

* Salt and pepper to taste, of course. If the flavor is a bit frail, use a little chicken bouillon concentrate in place of some of the salt. I also add just a hint of soy sauce–not enough to make my gravy taste like Chinese food, just enough to enhance the flavor, maybe a half-teaspoon to a teaspoon. And I cut a garlic clove in half, impale it on a fork, and stir the gravy with it for a minute or two. Again, I don’t want the garlic to be noticeable, but the tiny hint of it enriches the flavor. Poultry seasoning is a good addition, too.
• Keep the Flourless Gravy recipe on the stove to the last minute. When all the food is on the table, hot and ready, stir in the giblets if you’re using them. Then ladle into your gravy boat and bear it forth, to ohs and ahs of delight.