Emergency Gravy with No Stock

This is what you make when you have promised gravy and then discovered the stock cubes ran out weeks ago. It is water plus umami, layered on carefully, and it works because gravy flavour is mostly salt, savouriness, sweetness and a bit of acid. Get all four in and your brain fills in the rest. Be honest with yourself, it is not as good as a stock based gravy, but it is a very long way from nothing.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four plates

• 1 onion chopped small
• 30g (1oz) butter
• 2 tbsp (25g) plain flour
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp English or Dijon mustard
• ½ tsp yeast extract or 1 tsp brown sauce
• 500ml (18fl oz) hot water from the kettle
• black pepper to taste

Kit

• Small saucepan
• Whisk
• Wooden spoon

Method

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat and add the chopped onion with a good pinch of salt. Fry for seven or eight minutes, stirring, and push it further than you normally would. You want real brown, not gold, because with no stock in the recipe this browning is your only source of roasted flavour.

2. Add the ketchup and mustard and cook them into the onions for a minute. The ketchup will darken and the sharp vinegar smell will soften into something rounder.

3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute more. It will look like a claggy brown paste and want to stick, so keep it moving.

4. Add the hot water a third at a time, whisking each addition until smooth before the next goes in. Scrape the base as you go so any browned bits from the onions come up into the liquid.

5. Stir in the soy sauce and the yeast extract. Add the yeast extract while the gravy is properly hot so it dissolves cleanly, and stir until you cannot see any dark streaks.

6. Simmer for five minutes, uncovered. This is the important bit. With no stock, the only way to build concentration is to boil some water off, so let it reduce noticeably and thicken.

7. Taste it. It will probably need pepper, possibly a pinch of sugar if it is tasting sharp from the ketchup, and rarely any salt. Adjust one thing at a time.

8. If you want it smooth, blitz it with a stick blender or push it through a sieve. Blending the onion into it actually thickens the gravy further and gives it a body that helps disguise the missing stock.

Tips worth knowing

• Brown the onion harder than feels comfortable. Everything else in this recipe comes out of a bottle, and the onion is the only thing developing new flavour in the pan.
• Blending the onion in is a genuine upgrade here rather than a cosmetic choice. It adds body and sweetness that stock would normally provide.
• Layer the savoury things rather than doubling up on one. A little soy, a little yeast extract and a little mustard tastes more complex than a lot of any one of them.
• If you have a parmesan rind, a mushroom, half a tomato or the last of a jar of olives, chuck it in during the simmer and fish it out. Anything savoury helps.

Keeping and reheating

Three days in the fridge and three months in the freezer. It reheats better than most quick gravies because the blended onion holds it together. Loosen with water, not more soy, or it will creep towards too salty.

Questions people ask