Make Ahead Turkey Gravy

I hate making gravy for Thanksgiving. You have to wait for the turkey to finish roasting, and then you have to deglaze the pan, make your roux and cook it while your guests are all enjoying football.  Plus, now that we grill or smoke our birds, there really is no pan to deglaze.

So years ago, I started to buy my gravy, first from Whole Foods (though I will no longer shop there because of this). Since I order my turkeys (yes, we often make two), from Griggstown Farm Market I started to order my gravy from them too. But while the quality is excellent, I like a thicker gravy (plus at $9.00 a quart…)

So this year I thought I would give one of the many versions of Make Ahead Turkey Gravy a try (this one I got from my friend Marcia).

And I’m here to tell you, it was great!  I tweaked their version a bit and here it is.

Ingredients

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°F. Arrange wings in a single layer in a large roasting pan; I used the lid of my Chantal roaster. Scatter onions over top and roast the wings for 1 1/4 hours until they are browned.

Put wings and onions in a 5-6 quart pot. Meanwhile, add water to the roasting pan and stir to scrape up any brown bits on the bottom. Add the brown bits and liquid to the pot.

Add 6 cups of the broth (if using 1qt containers, save  the remaining 2 cups in the refrigerator), carrot and thyme to the pot. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for 90 minutes, uncovered.

Remove wings, saving the meat for another use (I’ve been feeding a bit to Fala) or discard.

Strain broth into a 3 quart container pressing vegetables to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard vegetables.

You don’t have to do this next step but I recommend you refrigerate the broth mixture overnight (I actually did it for 2 nights), so it’s easy to skim off the fat.  You can continue right away though if you strain the broth into a 3 quart pot and skim the fat from there.

The next day, whisk flour into the saved 2 cups broth until well blended. Bring broth in pot to a gentle boil. Whisk in the broth mixture from the wings and boil 3-4 minutes to thicken gravy and cook flour. Stir in pepper.

Serve now or freeze up to 6 months.

I strained it one more time into my containers to remove any clumped flour.

Strained Gravy Into Freezer Containers

I know this is time intensive but the results were delicious and by using the wings, you can make your gravy for Thanksgiving months out! I’ll never buy gravy again.