In episode 34 learn how to make gluten free Gravy with this easy and adaptable recipe! Choose between making with or without drippings, gluten free flour or cornstarch, and simple swaps to make turkey, brown, or even white country gravy! Join Melissa, gluten-free cookbook author, as she shares many easy, pro tips to make this audio recipe for gluten-free gravy, all are guaranteed to enjoy at your holiday meal!

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Recipes and Resources Mentioned

• Gluten-Free Gravy
• Fluffy Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes

Recommended Equipment

• Mesh Strainer
• Whisk
• Small Saucepan

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Transcript

Hey everyone, I’m Melissa Erdelac, host of the Gluten Free Recipe Challenge Podcast and creator behind the gluten free website Mamagourmand. Here we take beloved recipes you thought you never enjoy again and transform them into easy copycat versions just as good as the originals.

So you may think I’m being a little aggressive with starting the Thanksgiving recipes, but I only do one podcast a week, so I have to squeeze in all the essentials.

Today we’re going to talk about gravy, and the great thing about this recipe is that you can make it right now. It literally takes five minutes, or it’s freezer friendly, so this is a great make-ahead dish for holiday prep.

The other thing I love about this recipe, in particular, is how versatile it is. It can be made with or without pan drippings.

So if you don’t have the drippings, you could just make it with butter. You can make it with gluten free flour or cornstarch. It’s adaptable for turkey gravy, brown gravy, white gravy, and you could even make it dairy free as well. And I will go all over that so you will be completely in the know when it comes to all things gravy.

First let’s talk about the ingredients you’ll need. You’ll need butter or pan drippings. If you’re doing butter and you need a dairy free recipe, you could use ghee or plant based butter. And then for the drippings, you could use any drippings, so, turkey drippings or a roast drippings too.

So when you’re thickening a gravy, a roux is generally made, and a roux is just fat with flour. So you need a total of four tablespoons of fat, which can come from all the pan juices or all butter or a combination of butter and drippings if you don’t have enough drippings. If the drippings are from a leaner meat such as like a turkey breast, I recommend adding some butter for a richer flavor.

The other thing you’ll need is broth and the type of broth you use depends on what kind of gravy you’re serving. So chicken or turkey broth makes a sauce to serve with poultry, while beef broth or stock would make a brown or mushroom gravy. And then also be sure if you’re purchasing broth and not making it yourself that you read the ingredient labels. Uh, I know Swanson’s brand, College Inn, Imagine, Kitchen Basic, Pacific Foods, and then I use Aldi’s Simply Nature brand and their Chef’s Cupboard brand are both labeled gluten free as well.

Okay, next you need the thickener so that could be a gluten free flour blend or cornstarch. And the flour blend, the brand that you use really isn’t important here. And you will use an equal amount of gluten free flour or cornstarch. Those remain the same, but I will say the cornstarch has more thickening power, you will have to add a little bit more liquid if you’re using cornstarch. Cornstarch also has a tendency to break. When I say break, it means that once you store it or freeze it and re heat it, it will become thin again. If you aren’t going to use this gravy right away, then I recommend using gluten free flour instead of the cornstarch.

And then lastly, the seasoning. The amount of seasoning that you add really depends on the broth or the pan drippings. If they don’t have a lot of flavor, then you will need to add more salt and pepper after the sauce is thickened. But if you need any other flavor boosts besides salt and pepper, you could add a little bit of onion powder, you could add poultry seasoning, for a white chicken or turkey gravy, and you could add a little bit of gluten free Worcestershire sauce for a brown gravy.

Okay, so let’s make this. First, if you’re using pan dripping, strain those in a mesh strainer first, so you don’t get any little bits of the roast or the turkey breast or anything like that in your gravy.

And you will need, like I said, four tablespoons total of the pan juices. If you’re not using the pan juices, then just melt the four tablespoons of butter in a small pot over medium heat. And then to avoid lumps in gravy, what I do is I will whisk together my thickener, so my fourth cup of flour or cornstarch, with about a half a cup of the broth. I whisk that together to make that smooth first, and then I add it to the butter or the pan juices until you get a thick paste.

Then once you get that paste, then continue to whisk, and you’re going to pour in about one cup of additional broth in a steady stream and the mixture will be thick and then it will gradually kind of smooth out and loosen. You just want to keep whisking and then gradually add the remaining one to two cups of broth depending on how thick or thin you want your gravy to be.

And once it starts to bubble and your desired thickness is reached then You’re done. The last thing you want to do is taste for seasoning. Start with about a fourth of a teaspoon of salt and an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper and you could add more as needed. The other optional seasonings you could add is a fourth of a teaspoon of onion powder, a fourth of a teaspoon of poultry seasoning, one half to one teaspoon of gluten free Worcestershire sauce as well.

Okay, some other tips that I want to mention. I don’t recommend making this gravy directly in a roasting pan. So some people they’ll roast their turkey or whatever they’re making, they’ll take it out of the pan to rest, and then they’ll make the gravy in the large roasting pan on the stove. It’s too big of a surface to whisk and prevent the lump, so instead I recommend transferring it to a small sauce pan.

And if you do accidentally have a lumpy gravy, there is an easy fix for that. You would just put it. in a blender or use an immersion blender to smooth it out. And if you season your gravy, but you still feel like it needs a little bit more flavor, then some other things that you could add would be some extra fat.

So add an extra pat of butter or a splash of heavy cream really works well too. And like I mentioned before, if you need a dairy free gravy, just use vegan butter or ghee or just don’t. use the butter at all just use all of the pan drippings. And then most importantly what to serve it with. I have a recipe on my site for these extremely creamy and fluffy mashed potatoes that also are make ahead and freezer friendly because they have cream cheese in them and actually kind of a lot of cream cheese in them, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving. But what it does is the extra fat insulates the starches in the potato, so then you don’t get those watery mashed potatoes when you thaw it.

When you stir it and reheat it, it’s just as good as the day you made it. I will link to that recipe as well.

Okay, if you are making this ahead, you can just cool it completely and store it in an airtight container up to three days in the refrigerator.

And then when you reheat it, just place it in a small saucepan and you want to gently reheat gravy so it doesn’t break. So I would use like low to medium low heat. And if the gravy happens to be a little thinner when you reheat it, you could also whisk together a tablespoon of gluten free flour or corn starch with an equal amount of liquid and then just whisk that in while you’re reheating it.

And like I mentioned before, you can also freeze this. It could be frozen up to three months. I just put it in a Ziploc freezer bag and then lay it flat in my freezer and when you’re ready to use it then thaw overnight in the refrigerator and then also gently reheat it on the stovetop.

So remember you can find the full printable recipe on the show notes page and to get to that just click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on. Or you could go to my recipe website, which is MamaGourmand. com and click on the podcast tab and there you will find the full recipes along with any ingredients or equipment I’ve mentioned.

The post Episode 34 How to Make Smooth Gluten-Free Gravy in 5 Minutes appeared first on MamaGourmand.