Recipe: Sauces and Gravies

I am not sure where I got this recipe otherwise I would give credit.

When I make sauces or gravy I use a basic white sauce.  It can be flavored with different items to give it a variety of flavors.


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Of course, my favorite is cream gravy for chicken fried steak made with the drippings from cooking the steak.


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At Thanksgiving, I usually made a Bechamel Sauce using the giblets and stock from the turkey.

One of my favorite breakfasts is sausage gravy and biscuits, just a crumbled cooked sausage to the white sauce.


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Lumpless White Sauce aka White Gravy

Use equal parts flour and butter by volume. Example: 1tbsp butter goes with 1 tbsp flour. But you can see as you cook it how much it 'works'.

1. melt 2tbsp butter in the bottom of the pan.
2. add in 1 1/2 tbsp flour and mix. Look at it. Can it handle another 1/2tbsp flour? If so, throw that in.

Method: watch it bubble and move. You should be able to pull it into a ball in the center and have it bubble and spread. If it isn't able to spread, you have used too much flour. stir it so that it all cooks and does not burn.

As it cooks it goes whiter, and bubbles and spreads less. This whole process takes maybe 2 mins.

Now: REMOVE FROM HEAT.

3. Add 2c milk all at once, and whisk or stir briskly. Do not return to the heat until this has mixed.

Bring to a simmer and cook a further 2 mins. Add seasonings as desired. At this point, if making macaroni cheese, add about 1c grated cheese, salt, pepper and pour over cooked macaroni in an oven-proof dish, Serves 2. Double the recipe for a usual size of mac n cheese.

Mustard sauce: add 1tsp standard mustard. Parsley sauce: add a handful of parsley. Bechamel: cheese and nutmeg.

To do a 4 oz can salmon with parsley, I would use only 1tbsp of everything, 1 can salmon and a good handful of parsley. That would feed 2.

My mother inflicted 'white sauce' with leeks and white sauce with carrots on me as a child and I never got over it. Just disgusting. I only use it as a base for something else.

Troubleshooting: lumps? Did not have all flour impregnated with fat before adding milk. Or else added milk piecemeal and it clenched at some, and not at others. If you have lumps, get out your whisk and whisk furiously.

Too thick? add milk.
Too thin? cook a little longer. In desperation, can mix flour with cold water in a shaker, shake, and then add this to the sauce.


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What is your favorite recipe for a sauce or gravy?

My husband isn't that keen on white sauces, so if I make a sauce it is usually a traditional gravy. Just taking the juices from the roast, and veg, and thickening with cornflour (maize starch). I might add a little marmite if it needs a bit more salt, a dash or worcestershire sauce for fruitiness, and a very tiny bit of black treacle or molasses for depth of flavour. I roast with water under the roast, which keeps it moist and makes a start on catching the juices and then usually use the vegetable water as well to dissolve off as much of the meat goodness that sticks to the roasting pan as possible.
(edited to add:) I forgot to say that you need to leave the meat juice to settle a little and separate off the fat from the top. This could be used for frying, or clarified for other uses or (if red meat) is nice for wild bird food (or presumably domestic fowls too).
The trick with cornflour is to add a little cold water to it first to slacken it. I never measure, so the viscocity of the gravy is a bit hit and miss, but I think about 1 tablespoon flour per pint stock is about right. Bring the stocks to the boil and pour into the cornflour liquid stirring constantly and carefully into the corners, then pour back into the heating pan and bring back to the boil. Boil while stirring for a couple of minutes.
This is so simple I'm hesitating to post it!

This (starting with a roux, then turning it into béchamel) is the beginning of how I make one of my kids' favorite foods - mac & cheese. I often include some stock, not just milk, and then (obviously) melt cheese in it. Sometime I make cheeseburger mac, with the fat from the ground beef replacing the butter.

I grew up in Minnesota, land of the hotdish, or what other people call a casserole. The recipes I grew up with all called for a can of cream of mushroom soup. Eventually I started wondering what the hell is actually in the can and what can I replace it with - again, landing on béchamel.

My other favorite sauce is the spicy red sauce in shakshuka (also known as eggs in hell). It's really simple to make, especially with store-bought harissa (the chili paste that gives it most of the flavor), but I can't buy that around here so I have been making my own. Heat olive oil, saute onions and maybe some garlic and/or sweet peppers; add harissa to taste; add plain tomato sauce and heat that through; add cubed feta or similar cheese (optional); and then poach five or six eggs in all that. I like to add greens or fresh herbs once it's done cooking, but I do that in my own bowl. This can be eaten on its own, but we usually have it over grits or egg noodles, as a replacement for tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, or (most recently) one of my kids asked me to make this as a sauce with ravioli. That was pretty good but I like it best on grits.

For Christmas, I made bone broth with some added chicken meat to make Chickens and Dumplings.

Dear hubby does not like dumpling so I have not made them in a long time.

The dumpling are a favorite food for my son in law.

One thing I am finding lately is that most recipes say Salt and Pepper to taste.  Really?

Since I was using bone broth I made a Veloute Sauce which is a basic white sauce made with stock.

What I did was to add 3 Tablespoons of flour ans 1/4 teaspoon of salt per cup of liquid.  Since I did not know how many cups of liquid I had I guessed that 1 cup flour and 1 1/4 teaspoon salt would work and it did work.  That proportion was for about 5 cups of liquid.  

For the dumplings I used a can of refrigerated biscuits cut into four pieces.

I am real happy at the way my Veloute Sauce and dumplings turned out.