Christmas Eve Slow Cooker Gravy

The slow cooker is the only appliance in the house doing nothing on Christmas Eve. Fill it before bed and you wake up to a house that smells of roast dinner and a pan of stock that needs nothing but a roux. The one thing to know is that a slow cooker with the lid on evaporates almost nothing, so the reducing has to happen on the hob afterwards.

Ingredients

Makes about 1.2 litres, enough for ten plates

• 1.2kg (2lb 10oz) turkey wings chopped through the joints
• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 2 onions quartered, skin on
• 2 carrots thickly sliced
• 2 sticks celery thickly sliced
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 150ml (5fl oz) dry white wine
• 1.6 litres (2 3/4 pints) cold water or to just cover
• 3 bay leaves
• 6 sprigs thyme
• 60g (2oz) butter
• 60g (2oz) plain flour
• sea salt and black pepper

Kit

• Slow cooker, 5 litre or larger
• Frying pan
• Fine sieve
• Wide saucepan

Method

1. Brown the turkey wings in the oil in a frying pan over a high heat, in two batches so they colour rather than steam. Ten minutes a batch, turning, until they are properly dark. Skipping this step gives you a beige stock and no amount of slow cooking will fix it.

2. Transfer the wings to the slow cooker. Fry the onions, carrots and celery in the same pan for five minutes, stir in the tomato puree and cook it out for two minutes, then tip them in with the wings.

3. Pour the wine into the hot frying pan and scrape the base clean while it bubbles, then pour that into the slow cooker too. Add the water so everything is just covered, plus the bay and thyme. Do not fill the pot past three quarters.

4. Set it to low and leave it overnight, eight to ten hours. There is no need to check it. In the morning the wings will have fallen apart and the liquid will be dark and smell exactly as you hoped.

5. Strain through a fine sieve into a wide saucepan, pressing gently. Discard the bones, or pick the meat for a sandwich. Skim the fat off the top with a ladle or lift the set fat off if you chilled it.

6. Boil the strained stock hard in the wide pan for fifteen to twenty minutes until you have about 1.2 litres. This is the step that turns slow cooker liquid into stock. A slow cooker seals in steam, so nothing has concentrated yet.

7. Melt the butter in another pan, whisk in the flour and cook for two minutes until it is the colour of pale toffee. Whisk in the hot stock a ladleful at a time, simmer for eight minutes until it coats a spoon, then season lightly and set aside. On the day, reheat to a rolling boil and stir in the roasting tin scrapings and resting juices.

Tips worth knowing

• Brown the wings properly even though it means using a frying pan as well. It is fifteen minutes on Christmas Eve for the entire flavour of the gravy.
• Do not add salt before reducing. Boiling 1.6 litres down to 1.2 concentrates whatever salt is in there by a third.
• If the slow cooker is full of stock, you cannot use it to keep the gravy warm on the day. Strain and chill the stock, wash the pot, and it is free again by Christmas morning.
• A slow cooker on low sits at around 90C, which is hot enough to be safe for an overnight stock. What is not safe is leaving the finished stock sitting in the switched off pot to cool slowly all morning. Get it into the fridge.

Keeping and reheating

Strain, cool in shallow trays within ninety minutes and refrigerate. The stock keeps three days chilled or three months frozen, and the finished gravy the same. Do not leave anything to cool inside the switched off slow cooker, it holds heat for hours and keeps food in the danger zone.

Questions people ask