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jyl_gw

Gravy panic. How to make with no turkey

John Liu
4 years ago

I woke up at 6 am and lay in bed reading on my phone. I read plllog's "thankful" post and wondered how to get invited to her house for dinner. I read dedtired's "gravy" post and missed triciae. Then I went into a gravy panic.


Here's the sitch. We have 20 ppl coming. Everyone will have mashed potatoes and/or mashed sweet potatoes. But we only have one smallish roast turkey, a friend is bringing it, and while he's supposed to bring the drippings to make gravy, or make and bring gravy himself, I don't know how much gravy that will be. Probably not enough for 20 servings of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. And he could be hit by a bus, suffer a psychotic break, be abducted by aliens. Then we'd be entirely bereft of gravy. Utter disaster. Sad about my friend's accident / breakdown / abduction of course, but what about the ruined Thanksgiving dinner?


I'm not going to run to the store and buy turkey parts to make gravy. The whole point about this Thanksgiving, other than the giving of thanks part, was that I wasn't going to have to cook turkey. In fact, I was planning to give thanks for not having to cook turkey, which makes the whole thing kind of circular. And I don't want to be "that guy" who shows up at the grocery store *on Thursday* looking for a few turkey legs. Doesn't that say "doesn't plan ahead, no friends, must be a loser"?


In fact, I don't want to go to the store at all. Part of the pleasure of a well planned Thanksgiving is not having make a last minute trip to the grocery store. If no one went to grocey stores on Thanksgiving Day, then grocery stores would close that day, and everyone who works there would be able to spend the day with their families instead of helping "that guy" find the last pack of turkey legs that was dropped on the floor, run over by two shopping carts and an electric wheelchair, and thrown back in the fish part of the freezer bin.


So how can I make gravy with what I have in the house?


This is what I have or will have, to the extent it seems relevant:

- the drippings from a Beijing roast duck, which will (I think) have a distinct flavor, but I won't have this until just before dinner

- the rendered fat from some sous vide duck, available now

- the juice from some sous vide pork rib, ditto

- a jar of Better Than Boullion

- a pantry carton of chicken stock

- AP flour, butter, etc


What would you do to make a passable gravy from all this, preferably a make ahead gravy?


Is mixing the byproduct of different meats to make gravy a bad idea?


Is there even such a thing as duck gravy?


Help. Holp. Halp. It's a no-gravy Heffalump fiasco. I'm going to pet the cat until I calm down. Then I'll call everyone and cancel Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe aliens will abduct me and do whatever they do to the humans who forget the gravy.


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