Freezer to Table Gravy

Frozen gravy is the best kind of leftover, but it never comes back exactly as it went in. Flour gravies can split, cornflour ones weep, and everything tastes a bit muted after a month in the cold. None of that is fatal. This is the reheating method plus the small handful of things you add on the way back up that make it taste freshly made.

Ingredients

Makes about 450ml from a 400ml frozen block, once refreshed

• 400ml (14fl oz) frozen gravy one tub or four to five ice cube tray portions
• 4 tbsp water or stock for loosening
• 15g (½oz) cold butter the single most useful thing for reviving frozen gravy
• ½ tsp soy sauce
• ½ tsp vinegar or lemon juice
• black pepper to taste, freshly ground

Kit

• Saucepan
• Whisk
• Stick blender if it splits

Method

1. Get the block out of the tub and into a saucepan with four tablespoons of water. If it will not come out, run the outside of the tub under a hot tap for twenty seconds and it will drop out in one piece.

2. Start on a low heat with the lid on. Do not be tempted to go straight to a high heat, because the outside will boil while the middle is still solid and that is what causes a split.

3. As soon as there is enough liquid moving to whisk, start whisking gently and break the block down. It usually takes four or five minutes to go from solid to a rough slush.

4. Once it is fully melted, turn the heat up to medium and bring it to a proper simmer, whisking regularly. It will look thin and possibly slightly separated at this point, which is normal and not a disaster.

5. If it has split, meaning you can see fat sitting in beads on top or the texture has gone grainy, take it off the heat and blitz it with a stick blender for ten seconds. That brings it back together nearly every time.

6. If it has gone watery, which happens with cornflour thickened gravy, simmer it uncovered for three or four minutes to drive off the extra liquid, or whisk in a teaspoon of cornflour slaked in cold water.

7. Off the heat, whisk in the cold butter, then the soy sauce and the vinegar or lemon. Freezing dulls both savouriness and acidity, and those two spoonfuls put back most of what the freezer took.

8. Grind in fresh black pepper. Pepper loses its aromatics faster than almost anything else in a frozen sauce, and fresh pepper at the end does more here than in almost any other recipe.

Tips worth knowing

• Freeze gravy flat in a bag rather than in a deep block. A flat sheet thaws in a quarter of the time and reheats far more evenly.
• Flour thickened gravy freezes better than cornflour thickened gravy. If you know you are making gravy for the freezer, use a roux.
• Label the bag with the date and what meat it came from. Beef, chicken and vegetarian gravy all look identical when frozen and you will not remember.
• Never refreeze gravy that has been thawed and reheated. Make it into a stew or a pie filling instead.

Keeping and reheating

Once reheated, use within two days and keep it in the fridge, not on the side. Gravy is a low acid, protein rich liquid and it is not a good thing to leave out. Do not refreeze.

Questions people ask