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Gravy (Pour off liquid in pan) (II)
Pour off liquid in pan in which turkey has been roasted. From liquid skim off six tablespoons fat; return fat to pan and brown with six tablespoons flour; pour on gradually three cups stock in which giblets, neck, and tips of wings have been cooked, or use liquor left in pan. Cook five minutes, season with salt and pepper; strain. For Giblet Gravy add to the above, giblets (heart, liver, and gizzard) finely chopped.
A straightforward roux gravy built in the roasting pan, scaled for a whole turkey. Two details in the original need translating: what "stock" means here, and how long the giblets have to cook before they are worth chopping.
- The hinge: brown the roux properlySix tablespoons fat to six tablespoons flour is a full 1:1 roux, and it needs two to three minutes of active cooking until it smells nutty and turns the colour of light peanut butter. Undercooked flour is a common fault in pan gravy, and later simmering does little to hide it.
- YieldThree cups of liquid thickened with six tablespoons of flour gives roughly 3 cups of medium-bodied gravy, enough for 8 to 10 servings. Halve everything for a chicken.
- Giblet stockThe neck, heart and gizzard want an hour to an hour and a half at a bare simmer with an onion, a carrot and a few peppercorns. Add the liver only for the last 15 minutes; boiled long it turns chalky and bitters the stock.
- "Liquor left in pan"Pan drippings alone are far saltier and more concentrated than giblet stock, so if you use them, season at the very end and taste first. Deglaze the roasting pan with a little of the stock to lift the browned fond, which is where most of the flavour is.
- Skimming the fatPouring the pan liquid into a tall narrow container (or a fat separator) and letting it settle two or three minutes makes the six tablespoons easy to lift off. If the bird has rendered less than that, make up the difference with butter rather than cutting the flour.
- Straining, then adding gibletsThe instruction to strain comes before the giblets go in, so strain out lumps and skin first, then stir in the chopped heart, liver and gizzard. Chop them fine, no larger than a pea.
- ConsistencyAdd the stock in three or four additions, whisking smooth each time. The recipe's five minutes of simmering serves to cook out the raw flour taste and settle the thickness; it will tighten further as it cools in the boat.
Fannie Farmer appears to give several gravies in succession in the poultry chapter, though the page itself, headed II, establishes little firmly; this is the fat-and-flour version made directly in the roasting pan, the standard American method of the period and still the standard now. Giblet gravy belongs to an era of thrift in which a bird arrived whole with its neck and organs attached and nothing was thrown away: the wing tips, neck and gizzard, all too tough or awkward to serve, went into the stockpot to make the liquid that the gravy was built on. The word giblets came into English from Old French, where gibelet denoted a dish or stew of game; the sense of poultry entrails is a later English development. The 1:1 flour-to-fat roux and the roughly one-tablespoon-per-half-cup ratio here are the reason her proportions still read as unremarkable to a cook today.