Make Ahead Christmas Gravy

This is the recipe that takes the panic out of Christmas lunch. You make a finished, seasoned, thickened gravy at a time of your choosing, and on the day you reheat it and stir in whatever the bird gives you. Nobody can tell. The only thing that matters is cooling it properly, and that is easier than it sounds.

Ingredients

Makes about 1.4 litres, enough for ten with a jug held back for the freezer

• 1.5kg (3lb 5oz) turkey wings and drumsticks chopped through the joint by the butcher
• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 3 onions skin on, quartered
• 3 carrots thickly sliced
• 3 sticks celery thickly sliced
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 3 bay leaves
• 6 sprigs thyme
• 2.5 litres (4 1/2 pints) cold water
• 75g (2 3/4oz) butter
• 75g (2 3/4oz) plain flour
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• sea salt and black pepper

Kit

• Roasting tin
• Large stockpot
• Fine sieve
• Shallow trays for cooling
• Freezer bags or tubs

Method

1. Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan, gas 7). Toss the turkey pieces with the oil in a large roasting tin and roast for forty minutes, turning once, until they are dark mahogany at the edges. Add the onions, carrots and celery, smear the tomato puree over the meat, and give it another twenty minutes.

2. Tip everything into a stockpot. Put the roasting tin over a hob ring, pour in a mug of the water and scrape every bit of stuck residue off the base with a wooden spoon, then add that to the pot along with the rest of the water, bay and thyme.

3. Bring it slowly to a bare simmer, skim the foam, and leave it barely trembling for two hours with the lid off. Strain through a fine sieve into a clean pan and boil hard until you have about 1.4 litres of dark, glossy stock. Do not skip the reduction, it is where the flavour concentrates.

4. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over a medium heat, stir in the flour and cook it, stirring, for three minutes until it is the colour of pale toffee. Whisk in the hot stock a ladleful at a time, keeping it smooth, then simmer for eight minutes until it coats a spoon.

5. Add the Worcestershire sauce and season, but season lightly. You will be adding salty pan juices on the day and a gravy that is perfect now will be too salty then.

6. Cool it fast. Pour it into two or three shallow trays or a wide roasting tin so it is no more than 3cm deep, and stand them somewhere cool. It needs to be through the danger zone and into the fridge within ninety minutes, and a deep jug on the worktop will take four hours.

7. Once cold, decant into tubs or lay flat in freezer bags. It keeps three days in the fridge or three months in the freezer. Label it, because in January everything in a freezer bag looks the same.

8. On the day, thaw overnight in the fridge if frozen, then tip into a pan and bring it to a rolling boil, whisking, while the turkey rests. It will look claggy and split for a minute and then come back together. Stir in the resting juices and the scrapings from the roasting tin, boil for one more minute and check the seasoning.

Tips worth knowing

• Cool it in shallow trays, not the pan you cooked it in. A 20cm deep pan of hot gravy left on the side is the single most common food safety mistake at Christmas.
• Freeze a quarter of the batch in an ice cube tray. Two cubes turn a Boxing Day sandwich or a bubble and squeak into something worth sitting down for.
• Make it slightly thicker than you want it. Pan juices, resting juices and steam from the vegetables will all thin it on the day.
• Reheat once only. Gravy that has been cooled, reheated, cooled again and reheated on Boxing Day is not worth the risk. Take out what you need and leave the rest cold.

Keeping and reheating

Three days in the fridge, three months in the freezer, cooled within ninety minutes in shallow containers. Thaw overnight in the fridge rather than on the worktop, and bring it right up to a rolling boil when you reheat it. Do not refreeze once thawed.

Questions people ask