Quick Vegan Gravy in Ten Minutes

Most vegan gravy recipes ask you to caramelise onions for forty minutes, and those are excellent, but they are not a Tuesday. This is the ten minute version. It uses miso, soy and balsamic in small amounts, layered rather than piled on, and it comes out dark and properly savoury. What it lacks compared to a slow one is that deep sweetness, and the pinch of sugar in the recipe is an honest patch rather than a proper fix.

Ingredients

Makes about 450ml, enough for four plates

• 3 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
• 2 tbsp (25g) plain flour
• 1 tsp tomato puree
• 2 tsp onion granules
• 500ml (18fl oz) hot vegetable stock
• 1 tsp brown miso paste
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• ¼ tsp caster sugar
• black pepper to taste

Kit

• Small saucepan
• Whisk
• Small bowl
• Kettle

Method

1. Take a couple of tablespoons of the hot stock and mix it with the miso paste in a small bowl until smooth. Miso does not disperse into a pan of liquid on its own and you will end up with salty lumps if you skip this.

2. Heat the oil in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the tomato puree and onion granules and cook for forty seconds, stirring, until the puree darkens and the onion smells toasted. Watch it closely, dried onion catches fast.

3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute and a half. Take it a shade further than you would for a meat gravy, because without pan juices this browning is one of your only sources of roasted flavour. It should be the colour of a digestive biscuit.

4. Whisk in a third of the hot stock. It will thicken into a paste immediately, so keep whisking until it is smooth before adding more.

5. Add the remaining stock in two goes, whisking each time, then bring it to a simmer and cook for four minutes until it coats a spoon.

6. Take it off the heat and whisk in the loosened miso, the soy sauce, the balsamic and the sugar. All four go in at the end, because miso loses its character above a simmer and balsamic goes flat if you boil it.

7. Taste. It should be savoury first, then slightly sweet, with a sharp edge at the back. If it is missing something, it is usually acidity, so try another quarter teaspoon of balsamic before reaching for salt.

8. Grind in black pepper and serve. If you want it darker, another half teaspoon of soy will do it without unbalancing the salt too badly.

Tips worth knowing

• Loosen miso in a little hot liquid first, every time. It is the difference between a smooth gravy and one with salty brown specks in it.
• Use more oil than you would use butter. Oil is one hundred per cent fat where butter is around eighty, but oil also carries less flavour, so the extra tablespoon helps the mouthfeel.
• Onion granules are the honest shortcut here. Real caramelised onions are better and take forty minutes, and this recipe is not pretending otherwise.
• Check your vegetable stock for celery if that matters to anyone at the table, because most cubes contain it.

Keeping and reheating

Four days in the fridge and three months in the freezer, and it is one of the better quick gravies for freezing because there is no dairy in it to split. Reheat with a splash of water.

Questions people ask