Concentrated Gravy Base to Freeze

This is the most useful thing in this whole category. You do the long work once, reduce the stock to about a tenth of its volume and freeze it in an ice cube tray. From then on a single cube plus hot water and a whisk gives you a gravy better than anything from a jar, in the time it takes the kettle to boil.

Ingredients

Makes about 350ml of glace, which is roughly 24 cubes and 24 servings of gravy

• 3kg (6lb 8oz) beef and veal bones plenty of knuckle for gelatine
• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 3 onions halved
• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks celery
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 6 litres (10.5 pints) cold water
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 sprigs thyme
• 8 black peppercorns
• no salt at all this is critical, see the tips

Kit

• Roasting tin
• Stockpot
• Fine sieve
• Wide shallow pan
• Small saucepan
• Ice cube tray

Method

1. Heat the oven to 220C fan (240C conventional, gas 9). Oil the bones and roast for an hour across two tins, adding the vegetables and tomato purée for the last 20 minutes, until everything is dark and the tins are heavily glazed.

2. Move to a stockpot, deglaze both tins with water and add that in, then cover with 6 litres of cold water. Bring up slowly, skim thoroughly, add the aromatics and simmer at a bare tremble for 8 hours.

3. Strain, chill and lift off every scrap of fat. Fat does not reduce down, it just sits there and will go rancid in the freezer, so be ruthless.

4. Pour the defatted stock into your widest shallow pan and reduce at a steady simmer. You are going from roughly 4 litres down to about 350ml, which is a reduction of more than ten to one, so allow 3 hours and get on with something else nearby.

5. As the volume drops, move it into progressively smaller pans. A litre of liquid in a huge pan will scorch round the edges, and transferring down keeps the depth sensible.

6. In the last half hour watch it constantly and stir round the base. The sugars are now concentrated and it will catch and burn in seconds if you look away. Drop the heat right down as it thickens.

7. You are finished when it is the texture of warm treacle and coats a spoon in a thick opaque layer. A spoonful dropped on a cold saucer should set to a firm rubbery blob within a minute.

8. Cool it, then pour into an ice cube tray, about 15ml a cube, and freeze. Once solid, pop them into a labelled bag. To make gravy, drop one cube into 150ml of boiling water, whisk until dissolved, season and serve, or use two cubes for something more intense.

Tips worth knowing

• Absolutely no salt anywhere in this recipe. You are concentrating the liquid tenfold and any salt added early will make the finished glace inedible.
• Change down pan sizes as you go. It is the single best trick for reducing without scorching.
• One cube also transforms a jar of shop gravy, a stew, a shepherd's pie or a pan sauce. It is not just for gravy.
• If you overshoot and it goes solid in the pan, add a splash of hot water and whisk it back. As long as it has not burnt it is recoverable.

Keeping and reheating

Frozen cubes keep a year with no loss of quality. In the fridge the glace keeps a month as a solid block because it is so concentrated. Never store it with fat left in it.

Questions people ask