Northern Chip Shop Gravy

Ask for gravy on your chips north of roughly Stoke and nobody blinks. This is the gravy that comes out of a chippy urn: very dark, very savoury, and thick enough to sit on a portion of chips without soaking straight through them. Made properly from scratch it is a world away from watery roast gravy, and the trick is reducing hard before you thicken.

Ingredients

Makes about 550ml, enough for six portions of chips

• 2 tbsp beef dripping or vegetable oil
• 1 large (about 200g / 7oz) onion roughly chopped, it gets strained out
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 900ml (1½ pints) beef stock strong, use one and a half times the usual cube
• 1 tsp Marmite the savoury backbone
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce for colour more than flavour
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tbsp cornflour slaked in 3 tbsp cold water
• white pepper

Kit

• Heavy based saucepan
• Sieve
• Whisk

Method

1. Heat the dripping in a heavy pan over a medium high heat and fry the onion hard for 10 to 12 minutes until the edges are properly dark brown, past golden. You want scorched edges here, that bitterness is part of the chip shop flavour.

2. Stir in the tomato purée and let it cook against the hot pan for 2 minutes until it darkens from red to brick and smells sweet rather than sharp.

3. Pour in the stock, add the Marmite, Worcestershire sauce, soy and bay leaf, and scrape the base clean. Bring to a boil.

4. Turn it down and simmer uncovered for 25 to 30 minutes until it has reduced by roughly a third. Do not skip this. Reducing first is what gives chip shop gravy its intensity, and thickening a weak stock just gives you thick weak gravy.

5. Strain through a sieve into a clean pan, pressing the onion firmly with the back of a ladle to get everything out of it, then discard the solids. Bring it back to a simmer.

6. Stir the cornflour slurry and pour it in while whisking. It will thicken almost instantly. Simmer for 2 minutes to cook out the starch and let it come to full gloss.

7. Check the texture properly. Drop a spoonful onto a cold plate. It should sit in a mound and only creep slowly outward. If it spreads flat it is too thin, so add a little more slaked cornflour. Season with white pepper and a little salt if it needs it, though between the Marmite, soy and stock it usually does not.

Tips worth knowing

• White pepper rather than black. It is the pepper the chippy uses and it gives that slightly hot, slightly musty note you recognise the moment you taste it.
• Cornflour, not flour. A roux gravy goes cloudy and dulls, and chip shop gravy needs to be glassy and dark enough to see the light in.
• If it does not look dark enough, a few drops of gravy browning fixes it without changing the taste. Do not chase the colour with more soy or it goes too salty.
• Keep it hot in a jug in a pan of just simmering water rather than on direct heat, which is more or less what the urn behind the counter is doing.

Keeping and reheating

Fridge for 4 days, freezer for 3 months. It sets to a firm jelly when cold. Reheat in a pan with a splash of water, whisking, and bring it back to a simmer to restore the gloss.

Questions people ask