Cream and Cider Pork Gravy

Pork, cider and cream is a Somerset idea and it works because the apple acidity cuts through the fat of the meat. The important bit is boiling the cider down properly before the cream arrives. Cider is sharper than wine and it will curdle a cream sauce in seconds if you cut that step short.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four plates

• 25g (1oz) butter or the fat left from frying pork chops
• 1 onion finely sliced
• 1 eating apple Cox or Braeburn, peeled and diced small
• 6 fresh sage leaves shredded
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 200ml (7fl oz) dry cider a proper dry one, not a sweet commercial cider
• 200ml (7fl oz) chicken or pork stock
• 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 120ml (4fl oz) double cream
• salt and black pepper to taste

Kit

• Frying pan
• Wooden spoon
• Measuring jug

Method

1. Melt the butter in the frying pan over a medium heat, or use the fat left behind from frying pork chops without washing the pan. Add the onion and cook for six or seven minutes until soft and pale gold, stirring so it does not catch.

2. Add the diced apple and the sage and cook for three minutes more. The apple should soften at the edges but still hold its shape. Sage cooked in fat like this goes mellow and slightly nutty rather than medicinal.

3. Stir in the flour and cook it for a minute, coating the onion and apple. It will look claggy, which is fine.

4. Pour in the cider and stir hard to lift anything stuck to the base. Turn the heat up and let it boil for four to five minutes until it has reduced by two thirds and smells sweet rather than sharp. This is the step that protects the cream later.

5. Add the stock and simmer for another five minutes until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Stir in the mustard, then taste and season. Do all your seasoning here, while there is no dairy in the pan.

6. Drop the heat right down and pour in the double cream. Give it two or three minutes at a bare simmer, stirring gently, until it turns pale and thickens a little more.

7. Serve it over pork chops, a roast loin or sausages, spooning the apple and onion out with the sauce rather than straining them off.

Tips worth knowing

• Dry cider only. Sweet ciders are loaded with sugar and turn the gravy sticky and cloying once it reduces, and the extra sugar catches and burns at the base of the pan.
• Reduce the cider by two thirds and taste it before the stock goes in. If it still tastes sharp and boozy it needs another minute, and adding cream now would be asking for trouble.
• An eating apple holds together, a cooking apple collapses. If you only have a Bramley, use half and expect it to melt into the sauce, which is a perfectly good outcome but a different one.
• Any juice that runs off resting pork chops should go into the pan at the last minute. It carries a lot of flavour for something you would otherwise wipe off the board.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps three days in the fridge. Reheat gently over a low heat with a splash of stock, and stop before it simmers. It freezes for two months, but the apple goes soft and the cream can look grainy, so whisk it well as it warms through.

Questions people ask