Pass the Gravy, Please!

When I asked my friend Tom about his favorite childhood food memory, the reply was swift and certain: bread and gravy. His mother was a master cook, he said, with 200 cookbooks and three linear feet of 4-by-6-inch recipe cards. When she tasted something new and different at a restaurant, Tom remembered that she would soon reproduce that dish in her own kitchen, except that it tasted better than the restaurant version.

Tom’s mom’s chicken gravy

When it came to gravy, she especially favored chicken. When fried chicken was on the menu, she would make a “bucket” of gravy. She began with the skillet scrapings and grease and lots of pepper, then thickened the result over a gentle flame. Tom described the result as not only delicious, but with a perfect consistency – never runny; never a lump. For Tom, that warm gravy over bread was a perfect meal. Like Tom, I grew up in a Midwestern potato household. In my mother’s kitchen, that meant gravy with most meals. Meat and boiled potatoes along with vegetables. And GRAVY. Fried chicken and gravy; pork chops and gravy; even hamburgers and gravy. After the potatoes were on the plate and smashed, the gravy was passed and spread on the fork-smashed tubers.

My mom’s beef gravy

My favorite came when we had a roast. In our house, that “roast” was a two-inch thick chunk of prime chuck roast marbled with fat. After a long, slow roast in the oven, it was removed from the roasting pan and placed on a platter. Then, the metal roasting pan then was back on the stovetop where some liquid was added – often just water – and slowly warmed again to loosen the chunks. In the meantime, my mother would shake one part flour and two parts milk in a clean Skippy peanut butter jar and slowly add the thickener into the now-slowly boiling liquid while stirring with a fork. When it reached the right consistency, she would turn off the heat, add pepper and salt, and pour the results into a bowl.

My family’s leftover gravy

Any leftover gravy went into the fridge where it sat beside the leftover beef. If enough of both were available, that was another meal of hot roast beef “sandwiches,” thick slices of leftover roast beef on a slab of white bread, then doused with a nice covering of gravy. Leftovers short of a meal were fair game for any hungry interlude. They seldom lasted more than a day or two.

Over the years, I’ve made gravy for mashed potatoes, for Thanksgiving, and for other special occasions, but times have changed. I now live in a rice household, simply because it’s a better accompaniment to most of our meals. We’ve cut back on meat proteins and eat beef only once or twice a month. Still, I miss gravy, and I can make it in a pinch. I can still taste that liquid goodness, that fat flavor, and the additional pop provided by the right amount of salt. It might not be good for my arteries, but I don’t care. It tastes good, and I’m not going to live forever.

What’s your favorite family food memory? Please share it with us here!