Tip: Mix a little Kitchen Bouquet with your flour and water mixture. Good luck!

Boop have you ever made gravy from the drippings of the turkey?

I have never actually made the gravy. :) well, maybe once about 10 years ago.

That is how my stepmom makes it Deborah. She uses the turkey drippings and adds the flour/water mixture I think. She says we maybe need soup stock or something to make it better. Ours usually doesn't have a lot of flavor.

I am going to look up recipes too.

While roasting your turkey- I use a v rack but a regular rack will work fine, add 1-2 carrots, 1 celery stalk and 2 onions, all chunked to the bottom of the pan. Add 1/2 cup water.
Every 30 minutes or so, check the bottom of the pan for moisture. Use a pastry brush to brush the fond ( dark brown stuff created in pan ) onto turkey and add a little more water -NOT MUCH, to the pan just so the juices don't burn.

When the turkey is done, the bottom of the roasting pan will be covered with lots of dark brown fond.

Put the pan on a burner now and slowly add 1-2 cups of red wine, and about a quart of good chicken broth. Bring everything to a boil and scrape up all the brown. WHISK! Don't worry about the vegetables yet.
Cook until it tastes good- you are reducing the flavor.

Add salt and pepper now and any other seasonings. I don't add anything else though.
Pour everything through a strainer. Discard vegetables.
Degrease now if you want.

Mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with some cold chicken broth and slowly add this to the gravy. Bring to a boil and cook until thickened.

This may be made ahead. It is dark brown and tasty.

My hub makes awesome gravy- I'll see if I can grab his recipe from him.

We make gravy the same way that bumblebeez does - the only difference is we also make our own turkey broth. If the gravy isn't brown enough I add a few drops of Gravy Master.

I take all the drippings/scrapings/stuffing bits in the pan & pour them into a large pot. Use a stick blender to puree all the drippings til smooth. Now at this point it depends on how much you've got. If too many drippings, then boil off some of the liquid. If not enough, then add canned chicken stock. Taste for saltiness & flavor and adjust. If too salty, add a little water; if too bland, add the stock. Have your cornstarch (or flour) & water mixture ready (I think I make half a cup if I have lots of drippings, but then my family wants a gallon of gravy). Start adding the thickener to the drippings by spoonfuls, bringing everything to a slow boil. If not thick enough after coming to a slow boil, add more thickener. You can use a whisk to smooth out the gravy if needed or the stick blender. Sorry this is so imprecise. The factors vary so.

OK Boop I'm going to give you my family recipe I use and my disclaimer and warning, I never measure so I will try to get as close as I can but most of the time I follow the rule of start small and keep adding to taste.

If you can get 2 cups of drippings, add 1 to 2 cups of chicken stock. Then add the turkey neck and the turkey butt to the pot. Next add poultry seasoning, sage, salt and pepper to taste. Normally I add a bit of poultry seasoning and sage, let it simmer for awhile and then add more to taste. Next add 3 to 4 boiled eggs cut up, about a tablespoon of butter and let the whole thing simmer on low to slightly medium until it finally starts a good rolling boil. During the cooking process, stir every now and then mostly to make sure that it is not sticking in the pan. When you have a good rolling boil, then add a little water to a cup and slowly add a tablespoon, possibly two, depending on how much gravy you wind up making, of flower and stir in the cup until it is smooth. If you add the flour slowly and stir into the water quickly, it won't be lumpy. Once you have a smooth non lumpy flour misture, pour this mixture into the gravy and again cook slowly until it comes to a boil. At this point then begin adding the additional poultry seasoning, sage and salt and pepper to taste and cook until thickened and that's it!

It is really easy peasy and if you feel you have to measure the seasonings start with a teaspoon and keep adding until you get to get just the right taste level. If you get really stressed email me and I will give you my home number and I can walk you through it!

Gobble gobble!!

meant to type flour not flower!!

If you like giblet gravy, I do a version of Julia Child's, but I don't measure. I also start my pan drippings like Bumblebeez to add after the turkey has cooked but don't use red wine since I start with dry vermouth.

After getting the turkey in the oven, I start the gravy for a slow simmer while the bird is cooking. Use the heart and giblets but not the liver, as well as the turkey neck. (I love the liver just sauteed in butter the next morning.) You can buy extra giblets if you like. Lightly salt and pepper the parts.

This is an important step: brown the parts in melted butter.

After the parts are sort of carmelized on all sides, add chopped onion, celery and garlic. Cut 1 carrot and stalk of celery to fit in pot, add along with bay leaf, poultry seasoning and black pepper. Add 1/2 c dry white vermouth and let come to boil for a few seconds. Add low sodium boxed or homemade stock and simmer while your turkey roasts. Add more stock or water as necessary. Add turkey drippings @ end of roast. Remove solids. Chop giblets and return to broth. Taste for seasoning adjustment.

Cornstarch makes a silken texture. Flour roux is a less silky option. If you make roux, add and simmer ten minutes. Wondra is a easy option if you don't make roux. Wondra thickens without lumps in cold water which is then added to simmer a few minutes to thicken giblet broth.

Most important is to enjoy the process and your loved ones. The WF backup will be fine if you don't get around to homemade.

Boop, how is your gravy coming?

I just do a simple pan gravy for pretty much any kind of a roast. Pour off the drippings and separate out the fat. Add an appropriate amount of fat for the amount of gravy you are making back to the pan and heat up. Add an equal amount of flour and wisk to create a roux, be sure to scrape up the carmelized bits from the bottom. Wisk in defatted dripping liquid supplemented with chicken or turkey stock (you can make turkey stock ahead of time from a turkey wing). I don't really measure anything, unless there is a ridiculous amount of fat I just use all of the fat, flour until it looks right and then keep adding stock until I have the right consistency.

I use pan drippings, spooning out the excess fat. Then I add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add poultry seasoning and a dash of salt if necessary. Whisk in the cornstarch/water mixture and continue boiling till it's thickened to my liking. The gravy is a dark, buttery yellow color.

I made mushroom/vegetarian gravy that was delish also. I sauted onions and portabello mushroom (chopped finely) in butter till translucent. Poured the pan into the food processor with a bit of vegetable broth and processed till it was smooth. Back into the pan, add low sodium soy sauce, pepper and poultry seasoning, about 2 cups of vegetable broth, boil, then add the cornstarch/water roux and continue just as if I was making the turkey gravy. It was a little gray colored due to the mushrooms...if you took out the spore things under the cap it would be more brown. But it tasted very good, similar to the turkey gravy, but meatier.

Thank you all so much for the suggestions. They helped! It got a little crazy around gravy making time so I did not end up being the one to make the gravy. My stepmom made it again, but we did incorporate a bunch of the ideas here like the sage, using the immersion blender, and putting the onion, celery, and carrots in the pan while the turkey was cooking. I totally forgot the red wine which I wanted to add, and browning the parts.

Overall the taste was pretty good, but we still made a very runny gravy. next year we have to work on making it thicker!

Boop, if like many of us you have leftovers, you can still thicken the gravy a bit. Just add the thickener and gently reheat. Even if you don't have any leftover, make some gravy this weekend so you'll get the hang of it and won't be stressed next year. The same principles work whether for mushroom, beef or poultry gravy.

Over on the cooking forum there was a similar discussions that I saw yesterday. Read it for more great suggestions and look at Ann's tutorial. She put together a really good guide for roux.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gravy Tutorial