Miso Butter Gravy

White miso is fermented soya beans and rice, and it does the same job in a gravy that a long roasted bone does, which is to say it brings savoury weight without much colour. Beating it into soft butter first means it melts through evenly instead of sitting in clumps. This is the gravy for roast chicken, pork loin or a plate of chicken thighs and rice.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four plates

• 600ml (1 pint) chicken stock the better the stock the better this is
• 2 tbsp white miso paste shiro miso, the pale sweet one, not red or brown
• 50g (2oz) unsalted butter soft, straight from a warm kitchen
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 2 tbsp cold water for the slurry
• 1 tsp rice vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 spring onion sliced very thin, to finish, optional

Kit

• Wide saucepan
• Small bowl
• Balloon whisk
• Small sieve

Method

1. Pour the stock into a wide pan and bring it to a fast boil. Let it reduce by about a third, which takes ten to twelve minutes in a wide pan, until you have roughly 400ml left and it smells noticeably more concentrated.

2. While that reduces, put the soft butter and the miso in a small bowl and mash them together with the back of a spoon until you have a smooth pale brown paste with no lumps of miso left in it. Leave it somewhere cool but not the fridge.

3. Mix the cornflour and cold water in a cup until it looks like thin milk with no grit in the bottom. Stir it again just before you use it, cornflour settles fast.

4. Turn the reduced stock down to a bare simmer. Pour in the cornflour slurry while whisking, then let it bubble gently for one minute. It will go from watery to lightly clinging, which is all you want here.

5. Take the pan off the heat completely and wait about thirty seconds so it stops bubbling. Whisk in the miso butter a teaspoon at a time. Each addition should disappear before the next goes in, and the gravy will turn opaque and glossy as it emulsifies.

6. Add the rice vinegar and taste. Miso is salty, so you should not need any salt at all. If it tastes heavy, another few drops of vinegar will lift it.

7. Serve within about ten minutes, scattered with spring onion if you fancy. If it has to wait, keep it somewhere warm rather than over direct heat, because boiling it now will split the butter out.

Tips worth knowing

• Two tablespoons of white miso in 400ml is the limit. Go to three and it stops tasting like gravy and starts tasting like thin soup, and the salt gets unpleasant.
• Red or brown miso is much stronger and darker. If that is all you have, use one tablespoon and expect a heavier, more assertive gravy that suits pork better than chicken.
• The butter will split if you boil it after it has gone in. Off the heat, a teaspoon at a time, whisking, is the whole trick.
• Check the miso label if you are cooking for a coeliac. Plenty of miso is made with rice and is gluten free, but barley miso, sometimes labelled mugi, is not.

Keeping and reheating

Best eaten the day it is made, since the butter emulsion is what gives it the texture. It keeps two days in the fridge and can be brought back by warming it very gently and whisking, but it will never look quite as glossy again. Do not freeze it.

Questions people ask