I sometimes make what my Mom calls "milk gravy". Melt butter, add equal amount of flour, salt and pepper than add milk (evaporated is good) and some water once it gets thick. Re season and serve with anything. I also make sour cream gravy sometimes by melting butter and let it brown some, add some sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. It's rich but good on plain chicken that was cooked without skin. Hope these help you, Shirl.

Meat drippings are fat. I make "gravy" with butter, flour, salt and pepper and milk -- I suppose it is really a white sauce.

Same as above but also you could add chicken or beef boullion or meat base which is like a paste. We used to have what was called "poor man's gravy" a lot, which was bacon grease, flour, water (or milk if we were lucky) salt, pepper. Mom always saved bacon grease and if we had that and a sack of self rising flour, biscuits and gravy for a meal in hard times.

When I find myself in that situation, I just use beef or chicken broth from a can.

I often make gravy using beef broth or chicken broth instead of drippings. First I make a roux using equal parts of butter and flour then add the broth until I have the consistency I want.

Made one last night as there was only enough drippings for Yorkshires or gravy. .......Yorkshires won

As I think everyone knows, béchamel sauce is made with a roux plus milk; velouté sauce is made with a roux plus broth, and I never use milk when making a sauce. I think gravy is generally a béchamel sauce (unless you are a NY Italian, and then gravy is tomato sauce), especially in the South. I prefer broth to milk in pretty much any sauce, but then milk upsets my stomach, although cheese not so much, depending on the type. My mother made gravy with milk, but I do not. Broth has much more flavor, if it is good broth.

I pretty much never have meat drippings, as I do not cook that type of meat, except duck, and I would never add milk to a duck sauce. I make a lot of velouté sauces with vegetable stock (or water used to cook vegetables), but I guess these are not really gravy.

I frequently make mushroom sauces for meat, in which case I sauté mushrooms with onions, deglaze with a bit of white wine, and add to the sauce. If I am using dried mushrooms, I do not sauté them, but I do use the soaking liquid.

I grew up eating the "bacon grease gravy" that Rita talks about, and sometimes it was made with sausage drippings instead. No sausage or bacon, just the grease saved from cooking them. Red Eye gravy was made using coffee instead of milk, and is traditionally ham gravy here, but we used whatever was available.

I also make a "cream gravy" with butter and flour, browned and then milk or cream added along with salt and pepper. I do can my own chicken and beef stock, so I make gravy using those often. My daughter is celiac and can't have flour, so I sometimes make gravy with broth and cornstard.

The cream gravy is better if some chopped mushrooms are available to add to the butter before the roux is made.

Annie

I also use stock when I don't have drippings. For chicken, it's like you'd make for chicken pot pie without the pie. If you season it well, it's fine without the fond. For beef, I roast the bones to make the stock, and use the marrow and drippings, for the fullness of flavor, so there's some of that there.

I usually just use a little olive oil for the fat, but if there's some fat on the roast that you can trim off without making a mess you can render it and use it instead of butter or oil to bump up the flavor of the meat. It also helps to use the same flavorings as were cooked with the meat.

I also have done the chicken broth route. I also add poultry seasoning for flavor but other herbs would work too.

I make a vegetarian one with soy sauce and nutritional yeast. Yummy!

In my world, drippings have the caramelized meat juices & seasonings, not just fat. I have a vegetarian recipe somewhere that uses chopped veggies like onions, turnips, carrots & celery, roasted in the oven w/ some fat until well browned, as a base for gravy.