No Thanksgiving meal is complete without that boat full of delicious gravy to top everything off—and sometimes, it's that last little detail that can cause the most stress. After cooking all day, figuring out the gravy can be a last-minute headache that ends in, well, disaster.
To avoid that unpleasantness on this year’s Thanksgiving plate—and prevent the future embarrassment from a gravy catastrophe—we turned to the sage advice of a food guru. Alex Guarnaschelli, Food Network star and award-winning Iron Chef, revealed her hack for the perfect Thanksgiving gravy.
Alex Guarnaschelli's Best Gravy Recipe for Thanksgiving:
Ingredients:
- Onions, celery, carrots, potatoes (other veggies as desired)
- Turkey stock, or roasting liquid
Instructions:
- Prepare your veggies for the roasting pan.
- Roast the veggies outside of the turkey, in the bottom of the pan.
- Cook until completely tender—about as long as the turkey.
- Remove from pan and put in a blender.
- Add warm stock.
- Puree.
- You can then add this to your gravy or add enough liquid to use it as your gravy.
Guarnaschelli shared her “secret weapon” a while back, and it is so simple yet delicious. And honestly, it's hard to believe gravy is made any other way. If you need a recipe for very simple gravy, Guarnaschelli has that too!
Whatever vegetables are used, this gravy hack has brought high praise from everyone we've made it for. Using the vegetables with all that roasted flavor from the bird gives the gravy such a depth of flavor, and we have yet to find another way to make it that can compare.
Happy Thanksgiving!
