Party Buffet Gravy

Buffet gravy has a different job to Sunday gravy. It has to be held hot for a long time, poured by people who are not paying attention, and survive being stirred every ten minutes. That means less flour, more reduction, and a lid. Get those three right and it will still be pourable at the end of the night.

Ingredients

Makes about 3 litres, enough for around thirty hot beef or turkey rolls

• 3.2 litres (5 1/2 pints) strong beef or turkey stock unsalted or low salt
• 100g (3 1/2oz) butter
• 3 onions finely chopped
• 110g (4oz) plain flour
• 400ml (14fl oz) red wine or brown ale
• 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp Marmite
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 3 bay leaves
• sea salt and coarse black pepper

Kit

• Very large saucepan
• Slow cooker or bain marie
• Whisk
• Ladle
• Probe thermometer

Method

1. Bring the stock to a boil in a large pan and reduce it to about 2.8 litres. Ten minutes of hard boiling is enough. A buffet gravy carries less flour than a roast dinner gravy, so the body has to come from the stock instead, and unreduced stock gives you brown water.

2. In your biggest pan, melt the butter and cook the onions with a pinch of salt over a medium heat for twelve minutes until soft and golden. Do not rush them, they are a large part of the flavour here.

3. Stir in the flour and cook for four minutes, scraping constantly. A big roux takes longer than a small one to lose its raw taste, and 110g in a wide pan needs the full four minutes to go the colour of pale toffee.

4. Pour in the wine or ale and whisk hard. It will go to a stiff paste. Keep whisking and let it bubble for three minutes to cook off the alcohol before the stock goes near it.

5. Add the hot reduced stock a ladleful at a time for the first litre, whisking each in until smooth, then in larger pours. Add the bay leaves and simmer for twenty minutes, stirring and scraping the base regularly. At this volume it will catch if you leave it.

6. The finished gravy should be looser than a roast dinner gravy, about the thickness of single cream. This is deliberate. Anything held hot for two hours will thicken as it evaporates, and a gravy that starts thick ends up as paste.

7. Fish out the bay, stir in the Worcestershire sauce, the Marmite and the vinegar, and season. Transfer it to a preheated slow cooker on low or a bain marie and check with a probe that it is holding above 63C. Keep the lid on between servings and stir every fifteen minutes with a clean ladle.

8. Have a jug of hot stock beside it. Every twenty minutes or so, stir a splash in to correct the thickness. Two hours is the sensible maximum for hot holding, after which serve what is left or throw it away rather than cooling and saving it.

Tips worth knowing

• Keep it above 63C the entire time it is out. That is the legal hot holding temperature for food service and it is the right rule for a home party too. A probe thermometer costs very little and removes the guesswork.
• A lid, not clingfilm, and a stir every fifteen minutes. Skin forms where hot gravy meets air, and the stirring also stops the base scorching in a slow cooker.
• Ladles, not jugs, at a buffet. A jug tips, drips down the outside and empties in one go by someone in a hurry. A ladle in a covered pot keeps the gravy hot and the tablecloth clean.
• Never top up a hot pot of gravy with cold gravy from the fridge. It drops the temperature into the danger zone. Reheat the new batch to a rolling boil in a pan first, then add it.

Keeping and reheating

Make it up to two days ahead, cool in shallow trays within ninety minutes and chill. Reheat to a rolling boil before it goes into the hot holding pot. Gravy that has been held hot for two hours at a party should be used or discarded, not cooled and reheated the next day.

Questions people ask