Chocolate Gravy

Chocolate gravy sounds like a joke until you have had it. It comes out of the Appalachian mountains, where it was a cheap Sunday treat made from cupboard staples, and it is served for breakfast over split biscuits, which are savoury scones rather than anything sweet. It sits somewhere between a thin chocolate custard and a hot sauce, and it is properly good.

Ingredients

Makes about 700ml, enough for six split scones

• 40g (1½oz) cocoa powder unsweetened, sieved
• 150g (5oz) caster sugar
• 35g (1¼oz) plain flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 600ml (1 pint) whole milk cold, this one is different
• 40g (1½oz) butter cubed, stirred in at the end
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Kit

• Heavy saucepan
• Balloon whisk
• Sieve

Method

1. Sieve the cocoa, sugar, flour and salt straight into a cold heavy saucepan and whisk them together while dry. Cocoa lumps are stubborn, so break every one up now while there is no liquid to hide them in.

2. Pour in about 100ml of the cold milk and whisk it into a thick, glossy paste, working it against the side of the pan until there is not a speck of dry powder left. Unlike a roux gravy, this one starts cold.

3. Whisk in the rest of the cold milk in a steady stream. It will look thin and slightly grainy, which is normal at this stage.

4. Set the pan over a medium heat and whisk constantly. It will stay thin for four or five minutes, then thicken quite suddenly as the flour cooks out. Keep the whisk moving across the base the whole time.

5. Once it comes to a lazy simmer, cook for two to three minutes more, still whisking. It should coat the back of a spoon and be a little looser than custard. It thickens again as it cools.

6. Take it off the heat and whisk in the butter a cube at a time, then the vanilla. The butter gives it gloss and stops a skin forming quite so fast.

7. Pour it hot over split warm scones, put a little extra butter on top and let it melt into the chocolate. Eat straight away.

Tips worth knowing

• This is the one gravy in the category where cold liquid is right. The flour and cocoa need to be slaked in cold milk first, exactly like custard powder, or you will never get the lumps out.
• Sieve the cocoa. It clumps in the tin and those clumps survive a surprising amount of whisking, then turn up as bitter dry pockets in the finished gravy.
• Serve it looser than you think. It sets noticeably as it cools, and a gravy that is perfect in the pan will be a pudding by the time it reaches the table.
• A pinch of salt is not optional. Without it the whole thing tastes flat and oversweet.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days covered in the fridge with clingfilm pressed onto the surface to stop a skin. It sets very firm when cold. Reheat gently with a splash of milk, whisking, until pourable again. Freezing is not worth it as it goes grainy.

Questions people ask