Weekend Cooking: It's all about the gravy!

Is there anything better than a really good gravy as an accompaniment to a roast dinner, or even to a big fluffy pile of mashed potato where you can mix the gravy through! Yum!!!

I thought I would post about a couple of the different gravies that I have made over the last few years that have made even the most simple of meals like lamb chops into something a little bit special. Once upon a time I would never have even contemplated making gravy from scratch but these days there is only one flavour of gravy powder that I use. The rest is from scratch.

The first is from a recipe that I posted a couple of years ago for Lamb Chops with Red Wine and Garlic Gravy. This sauce tasted so good that the little chef wanted to just drink it out of a cup!  Rosemary and garlic are pretty common tastes to have with lamb and this gravy uses this as an element by using them to cook the meat. When the meat is cooked it is removed from the pan to rest and then the following ingredients are added to the pan juices

1 tablespoon plain flour
150 mls red wine
200 mls vegetable stock
1 teaspoon blackcurrant jam or plum jam

The flour is added to the pan juices and then the red wine, stock and jam is added gradually. Boil until thickened and then add the chops back in and the juices from where the chops were resting. Delicious!



Whilst the next recipe is again for lamb, it is slightly different in composition. A couple of weeks ago I had to cook a lamb leg, something that I don't normally do because it is too much for just the two of us but as I was cooking for 8 people it was suitable this time. That meant searching for a recipe, so I turned to my go to recipe website Taste.com.au and found this recipe for Classic Roast Lamb.

The lamb leg is rubbed with a combination of garlic, rosemary, sweet paprika and olive oil and then roasted. The gravy ingredients are

2 tablespoons plain flour
1 cup chicken stock
1/3 cup white wine

Skim fat from pan, leaving 1 tablespoon in pan. Place pan over high heat. Add flour. Cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes or until bubbling. Combine stock, wine (if using) and lamb juices in a jug. Slowly add mixture to pan, stirring. Cook, stirring, for 6 minutes or until thickened.

Part of what made this gravy so delicious (even if it didn't look overly pretty) is that you end up with quite a bit of rosemary being incorporated into the sauce.



The other gravy I wanted to talk about was an apple cider gravy for roast pork which was amazing, but it looks like the recipe has been removed from the site where I originally found it!  Normally I post recipes that I have tried and liked here on the blog so that I can find it without too much effort at any time but this time I obviously didn't! Lesson learned!

As far as I can recall the idea was to cook roast pork along with some apples, remove those from the pan and then add a couple of tablespoons of flour to the pan juices and then add apple cider and cook until thickened. From memory, it was about half of a 375ml bottle of cider. All of the adults at the table that night loved the gravy on this roast pork!

I really need to find a really good recipes for gravy to go with roast chicken, but for now I stick with Gravox Chicken Supreme gravy powder, which is also awesome with chicken schnitzel or chicken sausages and mash with vegies!!

Maybe I should cook a roast or something for dinner tomorrow night just so that I can have some good gravy again!

Do you have a favourite delicious gravy recipe?

I have shared this video before a while ago, but it would be a crime not to include a song called How to Make Gravy in a post all about gravy!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.