How Old Were You When You Learned to Make Gravy?

[Bree20]

Gravy was only at Thanksgiving, though a lovely giblet gravy it was.  For some strange reason, that was also the only time we had rice (MINUTE RICE) to soak up the gravy.  Grandmama used Wondra.  The first time I tried it on my own I used a flour slurry, which was my first year in grad school, so must have been 21 or 22  It worked out well, and I've schooled some friends on lumps since.  I still like the giblets, I buy extra at Thanksgiving.  Hard boiled eggs too, if I remember!

←

Expect for the minute rice my mom would gladly like to swap daughters - she does the giblet and egg in her thanksgiving gravy also, when I was little she would have to pick these out for me.

As for Wondra I love it - I use it for a lot of things - my husband (bless his heart) loves great northern beans. He takes homemade cornbread and pours the "pot liquor" and makes a meal out of just those two things, and sometimes I can not get the juice to the right thickness - just use a little Wondra and magic happens!

[Porthos]

Poultry gravy with a flour/water slurry - 13, from my mother.

White Sauce - 16, from a book.

Turkey gravy using a nice tan-coloered roux - 51, from Food Network.

I love sauces and gravies way too much.

[dave s.]

I was about seventeen and my country-gal girlfriend showed me how to make what in Oklahoma we call cream gravy.....sausage or bacon or for that matter ground beef.

Twenty-eight years later I still make it the way she showed me, and while of course my repertoire now includes all the usual sauces, I still like a good roux-based gravy best of all.....I must say my turkey gravy this Thanksgiving was really quite good-"I would eat my own father with such a sauce."

[Knicke]

Pan sauce: age 26

White sauce: age 26

Gumbo Roux (related): age 26

My grandma makes OK gravy, but sadly not amazing - and my parents are not really good cooks, either. So I've had to learn everything myself via books and you lovely people. I've been busy in the past year!

I'm 27 now, and sausage gravy on biscuits is in my immediate future. And I just learned how to make giblet gravy this past Thanksgiving! I cooked the whole thing myself for the first time, for the benefit of a few ravenous graduate school friends. The turkey was terrifying (and heavy!), but I must say that the gravy was AMAZING. Beginner's luck, I suppose.

Edited December 4, 2007 by Knicke (log)

[Kim Shook]

As a matter of fact, I have the kitchen reserved tonight for making the turkey gravy to put in the freezer for Christmas. I roasted the wings and made the stock on Sunday and Mr. Kim hauled the giant cast iron stock pot down from the attic last night. It should take about 4 hours. I will play a Mitford book on tape and wrap presents in between stirrings while it cooks on low, low, low! I have to buy a tree and box up gifts for the post office, so I'll be up late! But my house will smell so good.

Kim

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Did anyone else grow up in an off-the-boat Italian family? When I said "Sunday Gravy" and "Sauce," I meant tomato sauce. They're the same thing in our family, and I make the gravy/sauce the same way I learned way back then.

[MarketStEl]

The use of "gravy" to describe tomato sauce threw me for a loop when I first arrived in Philly.

Kansas City had an Italian immigrant neighborhood just northeast of downtown, much of it obliterated by freeways, and there were some decent Italian restaurants in town. None of them put gravy on the spaghetti they served--only sauce.

Nor do I recall the term either appearing on the menus in Boston's Italian restaurants or issuing from the lips of North Enders or East Bostonians.

The first time I encountered it used in this fashion was here. Since you're a Westchesterite, Fabby, I'm guessing that Italian-Americans in NYC and environs use it too?

[cathrynapple]

My parents were frozen food/packet gravy people, so i learned how to make THAT at about eight.

But I had a fantastic giblet gravy lesson this Thanksgiving (at age 23) and am now learning all kinds of southern cooking techniques from my boyfriend's mother. Having never even SEEN a gizzard till then, I am proud to say I'm a convert.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

The first time I encountered it used in this fashion was here.  Since you're a Westchesterite, Fabby, I'm guessing that Italian-Americans in NYC and environs use it too?

←

I'm more a Westchester-ette (got here in 01 via a lot of places). I was born 'n' raised in Cincinnati,Ohio (West side). My Italian grandparents were off-the-boat,worked in Pennsylvania and WVa, and somehow wound up in Cincinnati.

So gravy it was, sometimes. Mostly, we called it "sauce." When I see an Italian restaurant with Sunday Sauce on the menu, I get very excited about it.

[TongoRad]

My dad's from NYC (Brooklyn, then Queens), first generation Italian, and my mom is from Louisville, KY. On dad's side the term Sunday Gravy pretty much meant everything in the pot, or maybe even the event (as in "we're going over to Aunt Rosie's for Sunday gravy") and those big luscious hunks of beef and veal amongst the bracciole and meatballs were refered to as 'gravy meat'. The thing is...you never put 'gravy' on your pasta, or chicken cutlets, or whatever; that stuff, by itself, was called the 'sauce'. You didn't ask for 'extra gravy". I don't know why that disctinction exists, it just does.

On mom's side there were two basic types- the milk based beschamel type made from the remnants of a pan of fried chicken, or the giblet broth/drippings/roux type that would accompany a roast bird. To me they are the sort of things whose wonderful flavor is almost contradicted by how fool proof and easy they are to make. I really should make that sort of thing more often.

So when did I learn how to do it myself? Good question, probably too early to remember a specific instance, although by my teens I already had a knack for it. Some things just come to you through osmosis, perhaps.