Roasted Garlic and Onion Gravy

Roasted garlic is nothing like raw garlic. Give a whole bulb forty minutes in the oven and the harshness goes completely, replaced by something sweet and almost nutty that you can spread on bread. Blitzed into an onion gravy it gives body without flour and a background depth that people struggle to identify. Very good with roast lamb.

Ingredients

Makes about 550ml, enough for six plates

• 2 whole bulbs garlic tops sliced off
• 1 tbsp olive oil for the garlic
• 3 medium (about 450g / 1lb) brown onions roughly chopped
• 30g (1oz) butter
• 600ml (1 pint) hot lamb or chicken stock use a gluten free stock
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Baking tray
• Foil
• Saucepan
• Stick blender

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C fan (200C conventional, gas 6). Slice the tops off the garlic bulbs so the cloves are exposed, sit them on foil, drizzle with the oil and a pinch of salt, then wrap them into a loose parcel. Roast for 40 to 45 minutes until the cloves are soft, golden and collapsing.

2. While the garlic roasts, melt the butter in a saucepan and cook the chopped onions over a medium low heat for 25 minutes with a pinch of salt. Because everything gets blitzed, the shape does not matter, only that they are soft and gently browned.

3. Unwrap the garlic and let it cool for 5 minutes, then squeeze each bulb from the base and the soft cloves will pop out like paste. Scrape every bit in, along with the oil from the foil.

4. Add the garlic to the onions and stir for 2 minutes so it warms through and mingles.

5. Pour in the hot stock, add the rosemary sprig and simmer gently for 15 minutes. There is no flour here, so the thickening comes entirely from the blitzed vegetables.

6. Take out the rosemary, then blitz the gravy with a stick blender until completely smooth. It will go pale beige at first and then darken as it settles.

7. Return to a simmer for 5 minutes to tighten it, then stir in the lemon juice and season. If it is thicker than you want, loosen with a little more stock, and if it is too thin, simmer for another 5 minutes.

Tips worth knowing

• Roast the garlic while something else is in the oven. It costs nothing in energy and it keeps for a week in the fridge under a little oil.
• Take the rosemary out before you blitz. Blended rosemary needles are unpleasantly gritty and the flavour turns medicinal.
• This is gluten free without any effort because the blitzed vegetables do the thickening. Just check the stock.
• If you want a smoother result still, push it through a sieve after blitzing, though the stick blender gets you most of the way.

Keeping and reheating

Fridge for 4 days, freezer for 3 months. Blended gravies can separate slightly on reheating, so warm it gently and give it a quick whizz or a hard whisk to bring it back together.

Questions people ask