Stock-Based Gravies

A chicken-based gravy will work with any meat but, conversely, other meats will be too dominant in a cross-fertilization. Imagine how nasty a lamb gravy would be with chicken.

Whenever you cook a chicken you have a carcass to make stock. Simply cover with cold water, bring to the boil, lower the heat as scum forms, then skim carefully. Add an onion in its skin (the skin deepens the colour), a carrot, a bay leaf and 8 or 10 peppercorns, and simmer at the barest possible simmer for several hours, occasionally topping up with more cold water, bringing back to the boil and skimming each time before lowering the heat. The water should tremble, never boil during the long period when flavour will leach out from the bones and residual flesh to deliver a perfect clear broth. Boil it and the stock will be tainted by deep extraction from the bones, making it rank, gluey and cloudy.