Microwave Gravy

If your only hob rings are taken up by potatoes and peas, or you are cooking in a room with a microwave and not much else, this works. The trick is short bursts and a whisk between each one, because cornflour thickens suddenly and a microwave heats unevenly. Do it that way and it comes out smooth. Ignore it for three minutes and you get a jug of wallpaper paste with a hot ring round the edge.

Ingredients

Makes about 300ml, enough for two plates

• 300ml (½ pint) hot stock half a gluten free stock cube dissolved in boiling water
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 2 tbsp cold water for the slurry
• 1 tsp gluten free tamari or ½ tsp yeast extract yeast extract contains barley, so use tamari if you need it gluten free
• 15g (½oz) butter added at the end
• black pepper to taste

Kit

• Large microwave safe jug, at least 1 litre
• Small whisk or fork
• Microwave

Method

1. Use a jug at least twice the size of the amount of gravy you are making. Gravy climbs the sides in a microwave and boils over without warning, and a 1 litre jug for 300ml of gravy is not overkill.

2. Make the stock in the jug with boiling water from the kettle so it starts off hot. Stir in the tamari until it has fully dissolved.

3. In a cup, stir the cornflour into the two tablespoons of cold water until there is no grit at the bottom and it looks like thin milk. It must be cold water, hot water turns cornflour into lumps instantly.

4. Pour the slurry into the hot stock, whisking as you go, then whisk for a few seconds more so nothing settles.

5. Microwave on full power for one minute. Take it out and whisk hard for five seconds. It will look no different yet.

6. Microwave in further bursts of forty five seconds, whisking well after each one, until it thickens. In an 800W microwave this is usually three or four bursts, so around three and a half minutes of cooking in total. You are looking for the moment it turns from cloudy to glossy and coats the whisk.

7. Give it one final thirty second burst once it has thickened. Cornflour needs to actually boil to lose its raw starchy taste, and this last burst is what does it.

8. Whisk in the cold butter at the end, off the heat. It melts into the hot gravy and gives it a shine and a richness the microwave cannot provide on its own. Finish with black pepper and taste before adding salt.

Tips worth knowing

• Cornflour thickens at boiling point and then stops. If it has not thickened, it has not properly boiled yet, so give it another burst rather than adding more cornflour.
• Overcooked cornflour breaks down and goes thin again. If your gravy thickened and then loosened, that is why, and the fix is to stop microwaving it.
• The butter at the end is not optional if you want this to taste like gravy rather than thickened stock. Fat carries flavour, and there is none in the pan to borrow.
• Wattages vary a lot. Treat the timings here as a starting point for an 800W oven and go by what the whisk tells you, not the clock.

Keeping and reheating

Two days in the fridge in the jug with a plate over it. Cornflour gravies go rubbery and can weep when frozen, so this one is not worth freezing. Reheat in the microwave in thirty second bursts with a splash of water, whisking each time.

Questions people ask