I so enjoy you channel here! As an engineer myself, I like the way you approach problem solving. Excellent work! What an great tip on the "saliva thing." As an amateur cook, I am a fanatic about washing my tasting spoons after every sample and in cooking school they instruct us to use each tasting spoon only once. I've added this video to my Thanksgiving recipes list. Thank you.
Fascinating! Helen, your video demonstrations are always interesting and thought provoking, but this one is borderline riveting!! We are thankful for you. Much love to you and to your family! Be well.
Chemical engineer here: it’s definitively the amylase from saliva. As an enzyme, amylase doesn’t really loose its function unless you heat it. It will work more slowly under cooler temperatures. At a nice 30-35 degrees Celsius (about 80-90 in freedom units) it should go back to completely liquid in a couple of hours.
I am so excited that all the chemistry folks are jumping in with this wonderful information. thank you for providing specific temperature. Hot hot does it need to be heated and for how long to deactivate? I heard 180F for at least a minute in the context of pastry cream, but I don't know how accurate that is.
To avoid saliva contaminating your gravy with the tasting-spoon, do what my late Mother did: use a big wooden spoon to stir the gravy and drip a sample into your tasting-spoon. Your tasting-spoon never goes into the gravy. Your stirring-spoon never gets near your mouth. Problem solved! Mom also used pan drippings (for flavour) to make her roux and the hot water from the boiled potatoes and other vegs instead of stock to thin the gravy. Delicious gravy!!
I prefer the dark gravy...but as you mentioned it won't thicken as much. To counteract this, when my roux is almost to the point I want I will add a few tablespoons more of flour. Cook it off enough to get rid of the raw flour taste. Voila, a dark and thick gravy. Thanks again for your channel I love your in-depth explanations !
Excellent tip. Much easier than what I do, which is to deeply roast some vegetables (carrots and onions mainly) that go into the stock. But as you guessed, it’s easy to burn them.
Hi I'm a biochemist :) There only needs to be a very small amount of amylase, (maybe even a spittle's worth of talking over an open pot) Saliva has a ton of it, and those little buggers keep going at it indefinitely unless you add an inhibitor. I've only used isolated lab quality alpha-amylase inhibitors like phaseolin but there are also natural sources (can't speak to the flavor of them though) Don't know how effective they would be, since you wouldn't know how much amylase has snuck in, and you need more of the inhibitor than the amylase to increase the odds of them binding quickly before the amylase has done too much damage.
Yay -- I found a biochemist! Thank you :) Does boiling deactivate amylase? In other words do you have to be super careful with tasting only after the sauce is off the heat or during the simmer as well?
Helen, I like how you approach to cooking as a science! Here is my thinking regarding thickening of gravy: dissolving flour in butter requires too much butter which would make gravy too greasy. My mom taught me to gently fry flour without any fat to get rid of the raw flour flavor, cool it down and then use it for gravy. It takes about 10 minutes to brown flour without any fat in a frying pan, to a nice golden color.
My shortcut to a dark cajun roux is to toast the flour in a 350 degree oven until it is noticeably darker. It will get much darker after adding fat, so I check by wetting samples with water. A medium nut brown flour will make a nearly chocolate colored roux. I make large batches of this and store it for later. No need to cook the flour in the fat, just mix it together and you're set.
@@Elena-mk6bf Yes, I stir it. I use a big baking pan with a lip and spread the flour out as much as possible. I want to get as much surface exposed to the heat as possible. Once it starts darkening, it will move quickly. Be ready with a white plate and a container with water to test its doneness. Once you are happy with the "wet color", take it out of the oven and cool it before storing. This will have much less thickening power than white roux, so you can always add some white roux or that flour/butter combination if you need more thickening. Maybe that's why they use gumbo file (sasafrass) in Louisiana to thicken...
This was such a helpful video. Just in time for Thanksgiving gravy making. Many years ago I fed my little one commercially prepared baby food, usually directly from the jar. She'd only eat half of a tiny jar at a meal. The second day, the food much thinner. It took me awhile to realize those strained peaches were predigested! That being said, I'm not a fan of re-using tasting spoons without a wash.
The “all-purpose” gravy Kenji Lopez-Alt developed for Cooks Illustrated years ago is still my Thanksgiving go-to. I’ve made gravy the hard way, with turkey stock/drippings, but I always come back to the all-purpose recipe. It uses premade stock/broth and can also be made ahead and frozen, which is a huge advantage.
Amylase isn't the only way to degrade starch. Acid will also do it. This paper found that 24 hours at 4 °C and 5 pH was enough to reduce the viscosity by half. doi: 10.1007/s13197-013-0998-7 Wine typically has a pH of between 3 and 4. Depending on alkalinity of your stock and ratio of ingredients, this could easily be sufficient to explain your thinning gravy without involving any saliva. You may also consider reading "Texture - A hydrocolloid recipe collection" by Martin Lersch; A cookbook which details appropriate conditions for a variety of thickeners, including stability or lack thereof in acid.
That's super interesting. I often double the recipe and I noticed the sauce is more liquid for the following meal. Thanks so much for this info, I will make sure to be careful from now on. I also saw years ago a video about baby food and how it was more liquid the next day due to the baby's saliva.
I learned a trick this year about tasting as I go without contamination from a Japanese production [about the dwindling Geisha culture of Kyoto. A failed Geisha took on cooking duties for her Geisha house.] The actress playing the cook used her stirring spoon to laddle the sauce from her recipe onto a saucer without touching the saucer. Then she tasted the sauce from the saucer. Just remember the saucer isn’t a spoon rest and it is easy peasy Japanese-y! 😂 lol
Due to family with gluten issues, I always have to search up how much of various starches to use... Usually potato since I read that it last better for storage. I make a gallon of gravy for thanksgiving every year, but always forget make note of the amount of starch...
My tip is to taste with two spoons - a teaspoon to dip into the liquid to be tasted, and a big table spoon which is used to sip. When you pour the sample from the teaspoon onto the tablespoon, not only does this eliminate the chance of any saliva being returned to the pan, but the extra mass in the tablespoon disipates heat, meaning you can even taste-test a boiling liquid without burning your mouth. Just make sure the tablespoon never goes near the pan!
Amylase is a catalyst. a single protein could remove all the starch given enough time., as the process does not use up the enzyme. More Amylase means faster starch degradation, any amount will degrade all the starch given enough time. Actually it would depend on nothing else degrading the amylase for a single molecule, but the point stands for even a couple micrograms.
Fantastic video! The amylase in the saliva is a salient point. I've always considered starch thickened sauces to be less flavorful than other thickening methods. The starch seems to steal/dilute flavor from the sauce more. I try to rely on gelatin, xanthan gum, caramelized onions, and melting cold butter to maintain the emulsion, which doesn't seem to detract any of the flavor. I wonder, what is the argument for using starch? Low cost and easy availability? Toasty flavors from browning the roux? I usually don't lack for Maillard flavor in my sauces from ample browning of the meat and fond.
I think it's the quantity of the sauce. Most of my pan sauces don't use any starch and just rely on gelatin, but they are very intense and putting a ladle of them all over your mashed potatoes could be too much. I usually use them in small amounts. Gravy is used more liberally and it's intended to be more creamy and less syrupy.
Cornstarch makes a tasty gluten free alternative, but it's finicky! Boiling the gravy too rapidly or for more than 7 minutes causes thinning. Optimum time to boil it is one to three minutes.
Question! Last year I made a gravy with a darker roux, about chocolate shade, and I knew going in that it wouldn't thicken the gravy but it did taste really good, but thickening it was a challenge. My question is, how would you advise going about thickening a gravy made with dark roux?
I would remove some roux earlier and reserve it. Then cook part of your roux to the dark stage. Add the lighter roux back in and add your liquid. Alternatively, add some beurre manie in the end.
Hi Helen! I LOVE when you do deep dives like this. One thing I have never seen (and have not tried-YET) is using a roux powder with butter as a beurre manié. Roux powder is simply flour toasted, either in the oven or in a dry stainless steel skillet, until the desired color is reached (you have to add a few drops of water to see the actual color the flour has gotten to) and then cooled for later use-MUCH easier and less nerve-wracking than cooking a traditional dark roux. I first heard of this from a recipe published by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans newspaper for Thanksgiving Gumbo (made from leftovers), and later from Cook's Illustrated for one of their gumbo recipes. I have been wondering how a blond roux powder used in a beurre manié might taste, and how it might be easier to get the flavor alongside the thickening power of a lighter roux. It might be possible to combine a darker blond powder with plain flower to get the best of both worlds-a beurre manié with both the flavor of a darker roux and the thickening power of a light roux without having to make two different rouxes. Please let me know what you think about the concept. Thanks again for all of your wonderful cooking videos, and I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season!
@@helenrennie Hi Helen! I haven't ever seen this anywhere else either-it honestly was just something that popped into my head one day when thinking about (I promise I'm not making this up) the difficulties my brother sometimes has with making Thanksgiving gravy! I have some pretty dark (cinnamon color) roux powder from another recipe, and I will try to make a few other shades and see what happens on my end.
@@helenrennie Every year my botanical group has a foraging lunch, including our favorite 'soupe à la farine rotie' or browned flour soup. We add the flour to a pot over medium heat, and stir it constantly with a wooden spoon until it matches the spoon. Then stir in stock and seasonings, and at the last minute, your favorite foraged greens - chickweed in our case, but dandelion, sow thistle, amaranth, or any other lettuce-like texture works fine. This is a traditional dish from the east of France/Switzerland. You can also toast the flour spread on a baking sheet in the oven. I have observed that the darker the flour, the less thickening power it has.
I’m hoping that I am catching you soon enough to get your attention. This is off topic, maybe, but I absolutely love your sauce pan. I’ve been looking for one like this for years now, heavy and rounded button to allow for the whisk to reach every bit. PLEASE can you offer a source? If not, can I buy yours? I’m only half joking! Mine is enamel covered and it just doesn’t work for me….love your content and your humor…
Her pan is probably the ''Made In Saucier''. My favorite pan is the Demeyere Saucier. Also doesn't have any edges at the bottom and is a half circle. Highly recommend because it's easier to clean and you can whisk it properly. It's just as good for boiling rice, pasta or making soups too. Definitely better than any regular sauce pan.
@@helenrennie Oh my gosh, thank you both! Blessings as we approach Thanksgiving! …Gravy, and chocolate, are my favorite vegetables. I’ll order this and think of you every time I use it. Your ears will be burning with blessings, hopefully for years to come.
I've simmered roux sauce for 2 hours. No thinning after cooling, though it was an absurd amount of sauce so maybe that matters. The saliva thing was incredibly interesting.
I've known this from eons ago and am quite surprised that you do teach it to others, but don't practice it at home. Surely you should know what and the reason why you teach others things. You can actually use two spoons for this. One to scoop out the liquid and another to drop it on and to put in your mouth. As long as both don't touch each other you are fine. So you don't have to go taking a new spoon or clean it every time you want to taste. And also don't transfer anything above the pot you are using to be sure no contamination can take place.
I use arrowroot powder. put a couple spoons in a mug add some cold water, stir and add to the hot drippings. You can get this in the bulk stores. Way Easier. or potatoe starch is the exact same .
Because it's lumpy? J/K, I couldn't resist. And now you've reminded me of Julia Child serving a glass of 'Gravée Mastère" wine - a few drops of Gravy Master in a wineglass of water - with her dish at the end of her program, back when it was recorded in black/white.
I had an issue last week when I made a blueberry pie recipe from Joy of cooking. It called for five cups of blueberries (annoying since they are sold by the ounce) and four tablespoons of cornstarch (upper of the range.) It ended up watery. I tried heating it more the next day but it never thickened. I still don't know if I should have used more cornstarch or cooked it longer. Ugh!
Amylase is why you should always use a clean, dry spoon to remove jams and such from the jar. Lick the spoon? Wash it and dry it before using it again!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! If I need to serve gravy immediately, I always use 2 Tbsps of flour per a cup of broth. 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp of flour will not thicken the gravy enough right away, unless you simmer it for a while, which I don't see the point to do.
Your point about hot v cold liquid goes against the chef john theory of hot roux cold stock, cold roux hot stock method for getting no lumps. Have you tested if it actually provides less lumps?
I haven't done them side by side. Both of them will be lump free if you whisk. I don't actually know which one would be faster. I spoke too fast. That being said, I am 100% sure that cold liquid will take longer to thicken :) I don't like whisking and watching the pot for a long, especially on thanksgiving. So I like to go with hot liquid. I hold Chef John in highest esteem. He's made way more roux than I have. But either way, you won't get lumps as long as you whisk diligently.
Aha! Youve just explained why my custard powder based custard, thins out if I enrich it with eggs. The amylase in the eggs is breaking down the cornstarch.
Oh no, you put the spoon back in??? Surely The hit show Apothecary Diaries (episode 21) would have put her mind to rights! (It's very interesting and mentions how oxen sharing a water supply with the source of paper-production makes the glue for the paper dissolve thus making worse quality paper)
A flour-thickened sauce thins out after refrigeration because when it cools, the starch molecules in the flour contract and begin to trap less water, causing the sauce to release some liquid and become thinner; this process is called "syneresis."
This is why I dip the spoon in and then use finger to take a bit off spoon to taste. Never the spoon to mouth and also rinse after finger taste, spoon and finger lol
The same thing happens to half eaten jarred baby food after refrigeration if baby is fed from the jar. My mama taught me to NEVER double dip with a tasting spoon! lol
That’s why you don’t feed a baby from the jar and try to save it cause it’ll be soup when you go to reheat it so that makes sense that you had the same results.
Brown the flour separately in the oven for brown gravy roux for best flavor. Then adjust consistency with potato starch slurry before serving. I’ve found potato starch is pretty stable upon reheating and no need to rely on flour for thickening, like a gumbo think of the toasted flour as a flavor enhancer and thickener and potato starch as a stabilizer
The roux should be firmer, it should not be pourable. Equal parts by weight, not volume. Once it's brown, it loses 1/3rd thickening power. Add cold or warm roux to hot sauce, but never HOT. ruclips.net/video/aGS89KtrBnM/видео.html
You'll get all the lumps out either way. I am just impatient and I hate whisking pots for a long time. Especially on thanksgiving when there is so much to do.
The liquid in my gravy is usually a stock I've made from the carcass of something - so there's a lot of gelatin, and that helps thicken as it cools. Not that I have much leftover gravy (as my waistline can attest to) :)
I so enjoy you channel here! As an engineer myself, I like the way you approach problem solving. Excellent work! What an great tip on the "saliva thing." As an amateur cook, I am a fanatic about washing my tasting spoons after every sample and in cooking school they instruct us to use each tasting spoon only once. I've added this video to my Thanksgiving recipes list. Thank you.
Fascinating! Helen, your video demonstrations are always interesting and thought provoking, but this one is borderline riveting!! We are thankful for you. Much love to you and to your family! Be well.
Really interesting video! And thanks for your candor with the saliva. Anyone who might be shocked is clearly not.a cook themselves!
Chemical engineer here: it’s definitively the amylase from saliva.
As an enzyme, amylase doesn’t really loose its function unless you heat it. It will work more slowly under cooler temperatures. At a nice 30-35 degrees Celsius (about 80-90 in freedom units) it should go back to completely liquid in a couple of hours.
I am so excited that all the chemistry folks are jumping in with this wonderful information. thank you for providing specific temperature. Hot hot does it need to be heated and for how long to deactivate? I heard 180F for at least a minute in the context of pastry cream, but I don't know how accurate that is.
To avoid saliva contaminating your gravy with the tasting-spoon, do what my late Mother did: use a big wooden spoon to stir the gravy and drip a sample into your tasting-spoon. Your tasting-spoon never goes into the gravy. Your stirring-spoon never gets near your mouth. Problem solved! Mom also used pan drippings (for flavour) to make her roux and the hot water from the boiled potatoes and other vegs instead of stock to thin the gravy. Delicious gravy!!
I prefer the dark gravy...but as you mentioned it won't thicken as much. To counteract this, when my roux is almost to the point I want I will add a few tablespoons more of flour. Cook it off enough to get rid of the raw flour taste. Voila, a dark and thick gravy. Thanks again for your channel I love your in-depth explanations !
Excellent tip. Much easier than what I do, which is to deeply roast some vegetables (carrots and onions mainly) that go into the stock. But as you guessed, it’s easy to burn them.
Hi I'm a biochemist :)
There only needs to be a very small amount of amylase, (maybe even a spittle's worth of talking over an open pot) Saliva has a ton of it, and those little buggers keep going at it indefinitely unless you add an inhibitor. I've only used isolated lab quality alpha-amylase inhibitors like phaseolin but there are also natural sources (can't speak to the flavor of them though) Don't know how effective they would be, since you wouldn't know how much amylase has snuck in, and you need more of the inhibitor than the amylase to increase the odds of them binding quickly before the amylase has done too much damage.
Yay -- I found a biochemist! Thank you :) Does boiling deactivate amylase? In other words do you have to be super careful with tasting only after the sauce is off the heat or during the simmer as well?
Helen, I like how you approach to cooking as a science! Here is my thinking regarding thickening of gravy: dissolving flour in butter requires too much butter which would make gravy too greasy. My mom taught me to gently fry flour without any fat to get rid of the raw flour flavor, cool it down and then use it for gravy. It takes about 10 minutes to brown flour without any fat in a frying pan, to a nice golden color.
My shortcut to a dark cajun roux is to toast the flour in a 350 degree oven until it is noticeably darker. It will get much darker after adding fat, so I check by wetting samples with water. A medium nut brown flour will make a nearly chocolate colored roux. I make large batches of this and store it for later. No need to cook the flour in the fat, just mix it together and you're set.
@ That is a good idea! About how long does it take you to brown flour in oven? Do you stir it during toasting it?
@@Elena-mk6bf Yes, I stir it. I use a big baking pan with a lip and spread the flour out as much as possible. I want to get as much surface exposed to the heat as possible. Once it starts darkening, it will move quickly. Be ready with a white plate and a container with water to test its doneness. Once you are happy with the "wet color", take it out of the oven and cool it before storing. This will have much less thickening power than white roux, so you can always add some white roux or that flour/butter combination if you need more thickening. Maybe that's why they use gumbo file (sasafrass) in Louisiana to thicken...
This was such a helpful video. Just in time for Thanksgiving gravy making. Many years ago I fed my little one commercially prepared baby food, usually directly from the jar. She'd only eat half of a tiny jar at a meal. The second day, the food much thinner. It took me awhile to realize those strained peaches were predigested! That being said, I'm not a fan of re-using tasting spoons without a wash.
The “all-purpose” gravy Kenji Lopez-Alt developed for Cooks Illustrated years ago is still my Thanksgiving go-to. I’ve made gravy the hard way, with turkey stock/drippings, but I always come back to the all-purpose recipe. It uses premade stock/broth and can also be made ahead and frozen, which is a huge advantage.
I wonder if the gravy made with butter would brown if clarified butter is used...
I LOVE your honesty and testing. I enjoy
Fantastic video highlighting sensible practices. Loved it. Thank you.
Happy thanks giving from Egypt
Amylase isn't the only way to degrade starch. Acid will also do it. This paper found that 24 hours at 4 °C and 5 pH was enough to reduce the viscosity by half. doi: 10.1007/s13197-013-0998-7
Wine typically has a pH of between 3 and 4. Depending on alkalinity of your stock and ratio of ingredients, this could easily be sufficient to explain your thinning gravy without involving any saliva.
You may also consider reading "Texture - A hydrocolloid recipe collection" by Martin Lersch; A cookbook which details appropriate conditions for a variety of thickeners, including stability or lack thereof in acid.
I've always appreciated your extreme attention to detail.
That's super interesting. I often double the recipe and I noticed the sauce is more liquid for the following meal. Thanks so much for this info, I will make sure to be careful from now on. I also saw years ago a video about baby food and how it was more liquid the next day due to the baby's saliva.
I learned a trick this year about tasting as I go without contamination from a Japanese production [about the dwindling Geisha culture of Kyoto. A failed Geisha took on cooking duties for her Geisha house.] The actress playing the cook used her stirring spoon to laddle the sauce from her recipe onto a saucer without touching the saucer. Then she tasted the sauce from the saucer. Just remember the saucer isn’t a spoon rest and it is easy peasy Japanese-y! 😂 lol
Due to family with gluten issues, I always have to search up how much of various starches to use... Usually potato since I read that it last better for storage. I make a gallon of gravy for thanksgiving every year, but always forget make note of the amount of starch...
My tip is to taste with two spoons - a teaspoon to dip into the liquid to be tasted, and a big table spoon which is used to sip. When you pour the sample from the teaspoon onto the tablespoon, not only does this eliminate the chance of any saliva being returned to the pan, but the extra mass in the tablespoon disipates heat, meaning you can even taste-test a boiling liquid without burning your mouth. Just make sure the tablespoon never goes near the pan!
Helen always uses the scientific approach. That’s why I trust her.
Amylase is a catalyst. a single protein could remove all the starch given enough time., as the process does not use up the enzyme. More Amylase means faster starch degradation, any amount will degrade all the starch given enough time.
Actually it would depend on nothing else degrading the amylase for a single molecule, but the point stands for even a couple micrograms.
this is excellent insight... and school science fair project is just around the corner :) cheers!
Thanks for this.
I normally use cornstarch, but this is interesting.
Fascinating about the amylase!
Fantastic video! The amylase in the saliva is a salient point.
I've always considered starch thickened sauces to be less flavorful than other thickening methods. The starch seems to steal/dilute flavor from the sauce more. I try to rely on gelatin, xanthan gum, caramelized onions, and melting cold butter to maintain the emulsion, which doesn't seem to detract any of the flavor. I wonder, what is the argument for using starch? Low cost and easy availability? Toasty flavors from browning the roux? I usually don't lack for Maillard flavor in my sauces from ample browning of the meat and fond.
I think it's the quantity of the sauce. Most of my pan sauces don't use any starch and just rely on gelatin, but they are very intense and putting a ladle of them all over your mashed potatoes could be too much. I usually use them in small amounts. Gravy is used more liberally and it's intended to be more creamy and less syrupy.
Hello, I always use Maïzena, works great.
Corn starch, as it's known.
Cornstarch. Is that ever used in gravy? I use it quite often in Asian dishes as some stir frys give up a lot of liquid, so not quite a gravy.
It will make the gravy shiny and glossy....most people (Americans, at least) dont associate that with t-giving gravy.🤷🏼♀️
also it doesn't stay thick if you refrigerate and reheat it
Cornstarch is great, but it doesn't stay thick for long so can only be use toward the end of cooking for sauces that you won't be reheating.
Cornstarch makes a tasty gluten free alternative, but it's finicky! Boiling the gravy too rapidly or for more than 7 minutes causes thinning. Optimum time to boil it is one to three minutes.
Great video! Thank you.
Question! Last year I made a gravy with a darker roux, about chocolate shade, and I knew going in that it wouldn't thicken the gravy but it did taste really good, but thickening it was a challenge.
My question is, how would you advise going about thickening a gravy made with dark roux?
I would remove some roux earlier and reserve it. Then cook part of your roux to the dark stage. Add the lighter roux back in and add your liquid. Alternatively, add some beurre manie in the end.
@helenrennie awesome! Thank you so much!
Hi Helen! I LOVE when you do deep dives like this. One thing I have never seen (and have not tried-YET) is using a roux powder with butter as a beurre manié. Roux powder is simply flour toasted, either in the oven or in a dry stainless steel skillet, until the desired color is reached (you have to add a few drops of water to see the actual color the flour has gotten to) and then cooled for later use-MUCH easier and less nerve-wracking than cooking a traditional dark roux. I first heard of this from a recipe published by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans newspaper for Thanksgiving Gumbo (made from leftovers), and later from Cook's Illustrated for one of their gumbo recipes. I have been wondering how a blond roux powder used in a beurre manié might taste, and how it might be easier to get the flavor alongside the thickening power of a lighter roux. It might be possible to combine a darker blond powder with plain flower to get the best of both worlds-a beurre manié with both the flavor of a darker roux and the thickening power of a light roux without having to make two different rouxes. Please let me know what you think about the concept. Thanks again for all of your wonderful cooking videos, and I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season!
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know about this concept. I haven't heard about it before, but I'll read up on it.
@@helenrennie Hi Helen! I haven't ever seen this anywhere else either-it honestly was just something that popped into my head one day when thinking about (I promise I'm not making this up) the difficulties my brother sometimes has with making Thanksgiving gravy! I have some pretty dark (cinnamon color) roux powder from another recipe, and I will try to make a few other shades and see what happens on my end.
@@helenrennie Every year my botanical group has a foraging lunch, including our favorite 'soupe à la farine rotie' or browned flour soup. We add the flour to a pot over medium heat, and stir it constantly with a wooden spoon until it matches the spoon. Then stir in stock and seasonings, and at the last minute, your favorite foraged greens - chickweed in our case, but dandelion, sow thistle, amaranth, or any other lettuce-like texture works fine.
This is a traditional dish from the east of France/Switzerland. You can also toast the flour spread on a baking sheet in the oven. I have observed that the darker the flour, the less thickening power it has.
My late Mother-in-Law used toasted flour like this.
I’m hoping that I am catching you soon enough to get your attention. This is off topic, maybe, but I absolutely love your sauce pan. I’ve been looking for one like this for years now, heavy and rounded button to allow for the whisk to reach every bit. PLEASE can you offer a source? If not, can I buy yours? I’m only half joking! Mine is enamel covered and it just doesn’t work for me….love your content and your humor…
Her pan is probably the ''Made In Saucier''. My favorite pan is the Demeyere Saucier. Also doesn't have any edges at the bottom and is a half circle. Highly recommend because it's easier to clean and you can whisk it properly. It's just as good for boiling rice, pasta or making soups too. Definitely better than any regular sauce pan.
Mine is all-clad 2 quart saucier. I just tried to find it on amazon and couldn't, but this one from Misen should be similar: amzn.to/3V2VfrH
@@helenrennie Oh my gosh, thank you both! Blessings as we approach Thanksgiving! …Gravy, and chocolate, are my favorite vegetables. I’ll order this and think of you every time I use it. Your ears will be burning with blessings, hopefully for years to come.
@@susanward2085 What a coincidence, chocolate is my favorite vegetable, too! 😄
This happens when you eat a bowl of grits. By the end of the bowl, the grits have thinned.
Easier to flush down the drain, which should be done with all grits rather than eating them🤷🏼♀️
Mmm grits…… adding lots of cheese keeps their texture 😊😊😊😊
We thin the grits... but they don't thin us. 😢😢😢😢😢
What are grits? All I'm getting from google is that they're oats/oatmeal. But you also have oatmeal, so what's the difference? 🤔
@@cococreates26 Grits are parts of the corn kernel thats been treated with a chemical to make it digestible. Theyre absolutely terrible.
And that's why our mothers and grandmothers frowned opon returning a spoon used for tasting back into the dish.
I've simmered roux sauce for 2 hours. No thinning after cooling, though it was an absurd amount of sauce so maybe that matters. The saliva thing was incredibly interesting.
I've known this from eons ago and am quite surprised that you do teach it to others, but don't practice it at home. Surely you should know what and the reason why you teach others things.
You can actually use two spoons for this. One to scoop out the liquid and another to drop it on and to put in your mouth. As long as both don't touch each other you are fine. So you don't have to go taking a new spoon or clean it every time you want to taste. And also don't transfer anything above the pot you are using to be sure no contamination can take place.
I am terrible at gravy so this is great!
I use arrowroot powder. put a couple spoons in a mug add some cold water, stir and add to the hot drippings. You can get this in the bulk stores. Way Easier. or potatoe starch is the exact same .
you could also talk about xanthan somewhat easy to get nowadays
Thank you.
Why not use gravel master for the darkening
Because this video is about improving traditional recipes not using a pre made shortcut.
Because it's lumpy?
J/K, I couldn't resist. And now you've reminded me of Julia Child serving a glass of 'Gravée Mastère" wine - a few drops of Gravy Master in a wineglass of water - with her dish at the end of her program, back when it was recorded in black/white.
I had an issue last week when I made a blueberry pie recipe from Joy of cooking. It called for five cups of blueberries (annoying since they are sold by the ounce) and four tablespoons of cornstarch (upper of the range.) It ended up watery. I tried heating it more the next day but it never thickened. I still don't know if I should have used more cornstarch or cooked it longer. Ugh!
Amylase is why you should always use a clean, dry spoon to remove jams and such from the jar. Lick the spoon? Wash it and dry it before using it again!
I like to go pretty dark with my roux and add some beurre manie, just love that dark roux flavor
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! If I need to serve gravy immediately, I always use 2 Tbsps of flour per a cup of broth. 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp of flour will not thicken the gravy enough right away, unless you simmer it for a while, which I don't see the point to do.
Your point about hot v cold liquid goes against the chef john theory of hot roux cold stock, cold roux hot stock method for getting no lumps. Have you tested if it actually provides less lumps?
I haven't done them side by side. Both of them will be lump free if you whisk. I don't actually know which one would be faster. I spoke too fast. That being said, I am 100% sure that cold liquid will take longer to thicken :) I don't like whisking and watching the pot for a long, especially on thanksgiving. So I like to go with hot liquid. I hold Chef John in highest esteem. He's made way more roux than I have. But either way, you won't get lumps as long as you whisk diligently.
Happens with jello too. As kids we would taste it a lot for the sugar before cooling and it wouldn’t thicken.
Hi, why flower instead of corn starch. Less cooking out i think. ❤
What happened to cold stock hot roux no lumps?
Different chef, different advice.
I have a question. For the first time, I am cooking for someone seriously allergic to gluten. Does gluten-free flour work as a gravy thickener?
According to cook's illustrated, it does.
Aha! Youve just explained why my custard powder based custard, thins out if I enrich it with eggs. The amylase in the eggs is breaking down the cornstarch.
I can't imagine a thanksgiving dinner with brown gravy.
It's always been a white gravy for me.
Oh no, you put the spoon back in??? Surely The hit show Apothecary Diaries (episode 21) would have put her mind to rights! (It's very interesting and mentions how oxen sharing a water supply with the source of paper-production makes the glue for the paper dissolve thus making worse quality paper)
I think amylase is found naturally in wheat flour?
where do you get pom molasses?
I get mine at any local middle eastern store. But you can also buy them in some regular supermarkets and on amazon amzn.to/4i1g0hC
A middle eastern grocery store will have it. I’ve also seen jars for sale at a Lebanese restaurant.
Roux and eggs. If you can master both, you can make damn near anything.
Swallow before tasting. Got it. 😊
A flour-thickened sauce thins out after refrigeration because when it cools, the starch molecules in the flour contract and begin to trap less water, causing the sauce to release some liquid and become thinner; this process is called "syneresis."
Interesting. Does this happen to all flour-thickened sauces? Some of them seem to stay the same consistency.
I imagine that it would unless there was something else in the mix to help emulsify the water in the solution
My flour-thickened gravies invariably thicken up after refrigeration, so not sure why, if your information is accurate.
💛
Happens with a bowl of clam chowder. Will thin out by the end of the bowl. Amylase was always the reason!!
This is why I dip the spoon in and then use finger to take a bit off spoon to taste. Never the spoon to mouth and also rinse after finger taste, spoon and finger lol
Waiting for the hawk tuah...
The same thing happens to half eaten jarred baby food after refrigeration if baby is fed from the jar. My mama taught me to NEVER double dip with a tasting spoon! lol
Hawk Tuah!
Well, I guess you got that problem licked!
That’s why you don’t feed a baby from the jar and try to save it cause it’ll be soup when you go to reheat it so that makes sense that you had the same results.
Don't forget that you have Mom Saliva, which has magical properties that science can't explain. :)
Enzymes!
Brown the flour separately in the oven for brown gravy roux for best flavor. Then adjust consistency with potato starch slurry before serving. I’ve found potato starch is pretty stable upon reheating and no need to rely on flour for thickening, like a gumbo think of the toasted flour as a flavor enhancer and thickener and potato starch as a stabilizer
I think that grand mom’s figured this out, but dit not not let on
That's why you never double dip.
The roux should be firmer, it should not be pourable. Equal parts by weight, not volume. Once it's brown, it loses 1/3rd thickening power. Add cold or warm roux to hot sauce, but never HOT. ruclips.net/video/aGS89KtrBnM/видео.html
You might have to face off against chef john against the cold liquid and lumps. He swears by cold liquid resulting in no lumps.
You'll get all the lumps out either way. I am just impatient and I hate whisking pots for a long time. Especially on thanksgiving when there is so much to do.
WHOA
Gravy master
Wow Interesting yet nasty with people licking spoon and putting back into food : ( Thank You ; )
You don’t mention using corn starch instead of flour.
@ thanks. I didn’t know that
cornstarch doesn't reheat at all. it will thin out.
The liquid in my gravy is usually a stock I've made from the carcass of something - so there's a lot of gelatin, and that helps thicken as it cools. Not that I have much leftover gravy (as my waistline can attest to) :)