Caribbean Brown Stew Gravy

Brown stew gravy gets its colour from burnt sugar, not from flour or long browning. You heat oil, drop in sugar and let it go past golden to a proper dark toffee, then everything else goes in on top. It sounds alarming the first time and it is genuinely easy once you have done it once. The result is glossy, faintly bitter, sweet and hot all at the same time.

Ingredients

Makes about 600ml, enough for six

• 3 tbsp rapeseed or coconut oil
• 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 red pepper, sliced
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme
• 3 spring onions, bruised and chopped
• 1 tsp ground allspice sold as pimento in Caribbean shops, and it is the backbone of the flavour
• 1 scotch bonnet, left whole pierce it once for medium heat, chop it for serious heat
• 2 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tsp browning sauce optional, for a darker colour. Grace and Dunn's River sell it in most supermarkets
• 600ml (1 pint) hot chicken or beef stock
• 1 tbsp cornflour slaked in 2 tbsp cold water
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Heavy based pan with a lid
• Wooden spoon
• Small bowl for the slurry

Method

1. Heat the oil in a heavy pan over a medium high heat until it shimmers. Add the sugar and leave it alone for about a minute, then stir gently as it melts, foams and darkens. When it is the colour of strong tea and smoking very slightly, you are there. Roughly two to three minutes total, and it goes from perfect to burnt in about fifteen seconds, so stay with it.

2. Tip in the onion straight away. It will hiss hard and stop the sugar cooking any further. Stir for three or four minutes until the onion softens and takes on the colour.

3. Add the garlic, red pepper, thyme, spring onions and allspice. Cook for three minutes, stirring, until everything smells strongly of thyme and pimento.

4. Drop in the whole scotch bonnet and stir in the ketchup. Cook for two minutes so the ketchup darkens and loses its raw tang.

5. Pour in the hot stock and the browning sauce if using. Bring to a simmer, then turn it down, half cover the pan and cook for fifteen minutes so everything softens and the flavours settle together.

6. Lift out the scotch bonnet with a spoon before it splits, unless you want the gravy considerably hotter. Fish out the thyme stalks too.

7. Stir the cornflour slurry, pour it in and simmer for two minutes, stirring, until the gravy thickens to a glossy pouring consistency. Taste, then season with salt and black pepper. It should taste sweet, savoury, faintly bitter from the burnt sugar and warm rather than searing.

Tips worth knowing

• Burnt sugar and burnt burnt sugar are different things. Dark toffee brown and lightly smoking is right. Black and acrid means start again, because there is no rescuing it once it has gone.
• Wash your hands after handling the scotch bonnet and keep them away from your eyes. Leaving it whole gives you the fruity perfume without much of the heat.
• Fresh thyme on the stalk is worth buying for this. Dried thyme gives you a dusty flavour that sits awkwardly against the sugar.
• For a shortcut, skip the burnt sugar and use 2 tsp of bottled browning sauce instead. You will lose a little of the bittersweet edge but it is a fair trade on a weeknight.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days in the fridge and freezes for three months. The heat from the scotch bonnet builds slightly overnight. Reheat gently and loosen with stock, since the cornflour thins a little on reheating.

Questions people ask