I learned the method for gravy from my mother, and by the time I was in college, I had mastered it and was anointed the official gravy maker. And it was pretty easy to make: pour off the fat; scrape up the drippings; add a little flour, a little broth, and a shake of Kitchen Bouquet (hey, it makes the color great); and voilà, you have a deeply flavored, savory sauce. Easy. It stopped being easy the year there were no drippings. When the roast came out of the oven, the pan looked like it had been through the dishwasher rather than through two hours of cradling a juicy roast. That experience taught me an extremely useful lesson: a gravy, jus, or pan sauce isn’t hard to make in terms of what the cook has to do, but it is totally dependent on what the roast beef, chicken, duck, or the like does first. It’s impossible to predict and even similar cuts of meat won’t behave the same way twice. The backbone of any of these sauces is the concentrated flavor contributed by the food’s juices, and if you don’t have enough, you either don’t have a sauce or you have to find the flavor elsewhere. This recipe is well equipped with components and directions that can easily be followed.
Enjoy the app.