Dijon Gravy

Enough politics. The President is blathering on but that doesn't put food on my table. I put food on my table. Thank Me I can cook.

Gravy has many ways it can be done wrong. The reason is the recipes ignore basic chemistry and puts the ingredients together in a self-destructive way. And it's so easy to do it right.

Say you've cooked some delicious meat, a roast for example. You've got those burned on brown bits in the pan under the meat, along with dripped fat, and figure they will taste good so you want to make gravy out of it and put it onto your sliced roast. Good idea.

The way to turn that into gravy is the following:

1. Melt the brown stuff loose from the pan. This is called deglazing. It requires liquid. Water or milk or wine works great for that. Low heat, lots of stirring and scraping with a spatula till its dissolved. 
2. Set aside. What? Yes, set it aside. 
3. In a CLEAN saucepan or frying pan, throw in a heaping tablespoon of flour and a splash of olive oil. Stir them together into a paste over low heat. 
4. When the paste starts to bubble, which will only take 1-2 minutes so don't walk away, stir vigorously so it doesn't burn. 
5. Add the liquid from the deglaze to your saucepan and stir. The paste will melt into the liquid and the liquid will thicken and expand. 
6. Add a squirt of dijon mustard and stir some more. Glazes are typically salty, but taste just to be sure. 
7. As the gravy cools it will thicken more. If it gets too thick, add beef broth or water or wine and stir.  

Because you cooked the flour with oil rather than water, it won't form lumps so you get smooth perfect gravy. This is essentially foolproof provided you don't add water during the initial paste cooking phase and the heat isn't too high. Low works fine.

The traditional method of making gravy is to add flour or a flour and water mix to the deglaze itself. This makes lumps by cooking the outside starch leaving the inside raw. I have a suspicion it is taught this way as a cruel trick on newlyweds, but I can't prove it. Being male, I don't get cooking advice from women, preferring to observe shows and compare recipes then testing claims to verify. For me this is Science, and I work with observations. 37 years of Observations, since I started learning the Art and Science of cooking. Even popular cookbooks contain errors. The Joy of Cooking has many, and leaves out crucial details like the importance of salt when making sweets or icings. Getting gravy making wrong is interesting, particularly since the right way is listed in the Culinary Institute of America's textbook, which I have.

The above Dijon gravy could also be tweaked with other seasonings or cheese. Its good on meats, burgers, steamed veggies (broccoli or green beans), mashed potatoes, and various kinds of fries. As its basically salted flour with a bit of olive oil in suspension its also reasonably healthy. So you can eat this without feeling guilty. And it really does make bland foods taste better. I served the above on meatloaf last evening, with broccoli and mashed potatoes.