Boxing Day Leftovers Gravy

Boxing Day gravy is not a fresh gravy, it is a rescue job, and the rules are different. You will have a tub of set gravy, a carcass, some cold bacon and a fridge full of odds and ends. The aim is to make more of it and stop it tasting tired, which means new liquid, a proper simmer and something sharp at the end.

Ingredients

Makes about 800ml from roughly 300ml of leftovers

• 1 picked turkey or chicken carcass, broken up
• 1 onion, quartered, skin on
• 1 stick celery, chopped
• 2 leftover pigs in blankets or bacon rashers chopped
• 1.2 litres (2 pints) water
• 300ml (1/2 pint) leftover gravy from the fridge set solid is normal
• 1 tbsp cranberry sauce
• 1 tsp cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp cornflour, if it needs thickening slaked in cold water
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Large saucepan
• Fine sieve
• Whisk

Method

1. Break the carcass up so it fits in a large pan, including the wing bones and any skin. Add the onion, celery, the chopped bacon or pigs in blankets and the water, then bring it to the boil and skim off the scum.

2. Simmer, uncovered, for forty minutes. Uncovered matters here, because you want it to reduce and concentrate rather than simply steep. Strain it and you should have around 700ml of decent stock.

3. Spoon the set leftover gravy into a clean pan. It will be a firm jelly with a layer of fat on top, so lift the fat off first and put a tablespoon of it back in for flavour.

4. Pour the hot strained stock onto the cold gravy jelly and whisk over a medium heat until it has melted and combined. Do this gradually, since dumping all the stock in at once gives you lumps of unmelted gravy.

5. Bring it to a simmer and taste. Day old gravy tastes flat and slightly stale, and the answer is heat, time and acid rather than more salt. Simmer for ten minutes to bring it back together.

6. Stir in the cranberry sauce and the vinegar. Together they lift the whole thing and get rid of that reheated taste. Add a splash more vinegar if it is still dull.

7. Check the consistency. Diluting three hundred millilitres of gravy with seven hundred of stock usually leaves it too thin, so trickle in the slaked cornflour and simmer for two minutes until it coats a spoon.

8. Strain once more into a warm jug and season. Serve it with cold cuts, bubble and squeak or a turkey pie, and make it a touch thinner than Christmas Day gravy since it is going with drier food.

Tips worth knowing

• Get the carcass into a pan on Christmas night, even if you only simmer it and stick it in the fridge. By Boxing Day morning nobody wants to be picking bones.
• Bits of leftover stuffing whisked into the gravy will thicken it and add flavour, and pass it through a sieve afterwards for a smooth finish.
• Do not add bread sauce to this. It splits the texture and turns the gravy grey and claggy.
• If the leftover gravy has an odd fridge smell, boil it for a full five minutes before deciding whether to use it. If it still smells off, bin it and start with the fresh stock alone.

Keeping and reheating

Once made, keeps three days in the fridge or three months in the freezer. This is the second life of Christmas Day gravy, so do not refreeze anything that has already been frozen and thawed.

Questions people ask