It's all Gravy

Gravy is something that every man should know how to make. It's resource utilization at it's finest. You take the fat and broth from meat you've roasted, add a little flour, a bit of milk, and make a sweet nectar to put on potatoes. This is a vital life skill. Making gravy is very similar to making cheese sauce in that it's really nothing more than a roux based sauce. 

Gravy

Very very careful. This is important

Take the drippings from your roasting pan and pour them off into container to rest and seperate for 10 minutes or so. You want that layer of fat that floats to the surface.  Using a turkey baster, suck just the fat off the top of the drippings. This is a careful task and takes a little practice, it's a skill worth learning. Take the fat and put it in another measuring cup. I usually expand the volume of this recipe proportionately to take advantage of all of the fat that I can scrape off the drippings.
For two cups of gravy:
1/4 cup fat (drippings plus enough butter to
make the difference)
1/4 cup flour
1 cup defatted drippings
1 cup milk

Put the fat in a sauce pan over medium heat and head until sizzling. Add flour and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add the drippings and stir, add the milk and stir more. Stir gently until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Season to taste. Gravy will continue to thicken as it cools. You can make gravy out of just about anything you roast. We make it from chicken and duck and turkey and beef. Venison usually doesn't have enough fat, so you have to add more butter. You can make it from a pork roast, but it's slightly odd, I'm not sure why. I've even made it from ham just to try it but the flavor is so intense that nobody thought it was very good. When we make it from fowl we boil the neck and the giblets and cut them up and add them. Giblet gravy is good.

So take charge of the gravy this holiday season. When done right, it adds so much to the meal. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is impressed by a man that can make a world class gravy.