Probably no help to you today but this is where Trader Joe's box of shelf-stable turkey gravy comes to the rescue!!

How about this?

HOW TO MAKE GRAVY WITHOUT DRIPPINGS

Jump down to the recipe.

You've got a lot of good ingredients already

If you search "how to make turkey gravy without roasting a turkey' you'll get a lot of suggestions

Happy Thanksgiving

Haha. or lol. You have what you need. Use the chicken stock and maybe some of that bullion.? Years ago I always used box stock and it was always good with the turkey drippings. Important is the roux. We like it darker than the usual blonde. You will have gravy in 20 minutes.

If the drippings make it to your home, add some flour over heat, then some water or save some of that stock...add that tiny turkey gravy to your 'made ahead' gravy.

I woke thankful that I postponed Thanksgiving until tomorrow...

Have a wonder day and big hello to Kate.

John, spare the cat, it's Thanksgiving and I'm assuming SWMBO likes the cat. It's a bad idea, trust me.

I have made duck gravy and it was actually pretty good, but chicken gravy is closer to turkey. I'd make a gravy from the pantry stock and Better than Bouillion and then if it appears there will be a gravy shortage, mix it with the "real" gravy and you'll have a less-than-perfect-but-still-kind-of-like-turkey gravy.

Of course, I have that strange family where at least half of them won't eat gravy. What kind of people are these? Those aliens you talk about, no doubt. Anyway, they like piles of mashed potatoes with lots of butter, no gravy. (shrug) Heathens...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Annie

Whatever drippings you can rummage, a nicely browned roux, chicken broth. A bit of Madeira if you have any and if it still tastes thin add a little cream. The guests are at your table, we should all be so lucky.

Or a slug of sherry.

Gravy without drippings needs a ton of seasoning. More salt than you think you need. Remember, the drippings are caramelized runoff into which all excess seasoning has flowed. Yea, you can increase depth of flavor by toasting your flour and/or making a dark roux, but you really need S&P and toasted poultry seasoning. The rest is just stock and viscosity, Better than Bouillon can help make it salty. ;) Use it judiciously. A little rendered duck fat could help, if you're used to giblet funk. You could make your roux with it. Otherwise, remember, general gravy sauce is stock + roux. Don't get too fancy. It's just for sloshing. Just make it taste good.

Oh, and you're welcome here if you want to run away, but the weather and traffic are awful. You're better off there sans gravy. ;)

As a vegetarian, I used to make a pretty mean red wine gravy. Here's the recipe. Any animal broths, fats or pan drippings could be added to kick the flavor up a notch.

Red Wine Gravy (probably technically a sauce, but who cares)
Makes 2 cups

2 TBLSP veg. oil

1 med. onion

1 med. carrot

1 sm. stalk celeryy

2 TBSLP flour

2 med. ripe tomatoes, chopped (probably can use a can of diced toms)

1 cup dry red wine

1/2 cup veg. stock or some kind of meat stock or water

Salt and freshly ground pepper. I might be tempted to use tamari for the salt

Directions:

Heat oil and saute the veggies, if using, until onion is translucent and they are soft. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly until browned, about 1 min. Add chopped tomatoes. Add other liquids. Stir until well blended and thick. You could strain out the veggies to serve, or puree for a really thick sauce. I imagine you could season to taste with some herbs like a bay leaf, etc., and thin with more wine if needed.

Edited to add that I also miss Triciae. As a fellow chronic pain sufferer, she was very supportive and helpful, among SO MANY other ways she helped people here. I also have her great mole sauce recipe, but have never had the time to make it. Someday Tricia, someday. Cheers to you in heaven, and hope you're tipping a glass with Marlen, Janet, Lee, Sharon/Canarybird and Linda/Doucanoe, a few of the great cooks we have lost since my time here.

Thank you all. My panic has subsided. The cat is out of danger.

I think I will assign the gravy task to DD. We have a pint of duck stock, half pint of pork stock, and plenty of red wine, so I'm actually thinking of making a couple different gravies. All depends on how cooperative the labor is.

I made turkey gravy this year, just from the broth and drippings left in the turkey roaster after we removed the bird. Dad made the bird in one of those plastic bags. I have to say, turkey gravy without some roasted something or other, is pretty bland. On the flip side, the meat was fairly moist. Not my preferred way of doing a turkey, but Dad seemed to enjoy cooking it, so NBD. I don't think I like gravy no matter how it is prepared. But I did like that wine sauce back in the day.

John, I hope the gravy crisis has passed. I think anyone lucky enough to be at your table for Thanksgiving (or any other meal) probably would overlook the gravy or lack thereof.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Annie

I make a mushroom sauce instead, using dried Porcini mushrooms that I rehydrate and use the soaking water in place of stock, but I do add soup base/bouillon to it in place of salt. I like the BTB roasted garlic soup base, but I also use the dried Knorr chicken bouillon as well. I usually sauté onion before adding the flour to make the roux. I also add a bit of white wine - Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc - never red wine. I add red wine to sauces that have tomato, however, but only white wine to mushroom sauces. I use a combination of butter and olive oil instead of rendered fat if I do not have any.

In the past, it never seemed like I had enough turkey drippings to make an adequate amount of gravy for however many 'gotta have gravy on everything guests' we'd invited. I always keep a couple of cartons of low salt/or no salt chicken stock on hand, always have chicken bullion (the stuff lasts forever so why not), and usually buy a package of whatever chicken parts, usually thighs or leg quarters, are on sale to make more of a 'real' broth using the chicken with skin, onions, celery and carrots. After simmering for a good long time, the mixture is cooled, strained, and the chicken parts less skin disassembled for later use in another dish OR to add to the stuffing and gravy in some quantity. After cooling, I skim the fat off the top of the broth and along with a bit of added butter, it makes quite an acceptable dark roux using browned flour. Add the warmed up again broth and purchased chicken stock and we've usually enough gravy to feed Cox's Army if need be.

I know the above doesn't necessarily solve your problem (especially since its now Friday) but rather, just what I do when caught without an essential item.

Hope it went well for you!

I hope the dinner and the gravy went well too. I've done the make ahead buying turkey necks and wings to roast, and - I can always find turkey stock cartons in the soups aisle in grocery stores this time of year. I have some now and I didn't even cook the turkey here this year (although I did buy one, froze it, may cook it sometime in December).

So - don't forget it's OK to have commercial turkey stock/broth on hand, it could always go into a soup later if not needed for a sauce or gravy.

We were invited to my brothers for dinner yesterday. The gravy was purchased New Seasons store. A first for me, but all in all it really was not bad. Not like homemade from drippings, but I've had worse gravies that were homemade....

Like the year brother handed me the pan to collect drippings he'd thoughtfully put under the turkey in his Traeger where he'd cooked it. It had a fine layer of ash. It tasted like ash. Nothing I tried for seasonings disguised a taste of bitter smokey ashes ;0)

Boy, I wish we’d seen this! Our turkey breast of course didn’t have much drippings. DH tried to make a gravy from scratch with Wondra, Better Than Bouillon, and assorted sundries. But ended up throwing it out and we picked up a jar Heinz on the way. .

So the gravy involved experimentation, yelling, throwing food out, and frenzied remaking.

I had a little pork stock and a good amount of duck stock. I expected someone to bring some turkey drippings, and we had boxed chicken stock for an emergency. I thought it would be fun to make a few kinds of gravy. So I did something that made perfect sense to me. I put about 2 c of AP flour in a saucepan and browned it. It was fun, I got to do that rolling thing where you move the pan to get the contents to roll into a wave and thus mix. Okay, the kitchen got a little smoky but oh well.

My idea, you see, was that I'd have a jar of this pre-browned flour on hand for future "instant" gravies and general thickening. Because sometimes you need a sauce thickened right away and don't have time to mix raw flour with a little of the liquid, whisk it smooth, add and cook until the floury taste is gone, and you don't want the texture of a cornstarch thickened sauce.

Then I made the gravy for my low cooked deep fried pork cubes. I simply put the pork stock in a small saucepan, added butter and pork fat, then stirred in the pre-browned flour. It worked great: dissolved right away, no clumping, no further cooking of the flour needed, and easy to adjust the degree of thickness by adding a bit more pre-browned flour (let's call this PBF for short) because the thickness responded immediately. That was easy, I thought.

Then SWMBO started, not yelling exactly, but loudly expressing her disappointment and astonishment that I had cooked the raw flour, which is Never Ever Done and Unheard Of. DD took a few minutes to comprehend what I had done, then joined in the vocalization of Great Dismay.

Protesting, DD proceeded to make the duck stock with my PBF. And immediately claimed it was a disaster. I was busy frying confit duck breasts so I didn't see what she did. I think she may have used the PBF as if it was raw flour, starting the roux by cooking butter and flour. Maybe the PBF quickly became burned - since I didn't do any additional cooking of PBF during the actual gravy making, I am not sure how it would tolerate further cooking. I just don't know. Anyway she said the texture was gritty and the taste was burned, and that all the duck gravy had to be thrown out.

Throwing out a pint of duck stock is not something that makes DD happy. She said so.

In the end, she started all over with the Normal Sane Roux Method You Dummy and made gravy with the turkey drippings and chicken stock, and it was fine.

The pork bites drizzled with gravy turned out to be very popular. So there. And I have a jar of PBF that I need to hide or label as something else, lest SWMBO or DD find it and throw it out.

We've always used that jar of turkey gravy languishing in the pantry this time of year, but now that Dad is on a low salt diet that is out. It was way too salty for anyone's good anyway. I'm going to have to "stock up" on turkey stock if I can find some in the store. It can be thinned with unsalted chicken broth. Honestly next year I think I can make roasted chicken gravy and no one will be the wiser. I always have chicken stuff on hand . . .