TURKEY GRAVY

TO A TRADITIONALIST, THE THOUGHT OF A gravyless Thanksgiving dinner is culinary heresy. Good gravy is no mere condiment; it's the tie that binds. But too often gravy is a last-minute affair, thrown together without much preparation or thought. Many of us have experienced the result: either dull, greasy gravy or thin, acidic pan juices that are one-dimensional, lacking the body and stature that we expect from a good American gravy.

So we set out to produce a rich, complex sauce that involved as much advance preparation as possible to avoid that last-minute time pressure, when counter space is at a premium and the potatoes need to be mashed, the turkey sliced, the water goblets filled, and the candles lit.

We began our tests by experimenting with thickeners. In a blind taste test we tried four different options, including cornstarch, beurre manié (a paste made from equal parts by weight of flour and butter), and two flour-based roux, one regular (a mixture of melted butter and flour stirred together over heat) and one dark (in which the butter-flour paste is cooked until it is dark brown).

Although most tasters were pretty sure before the tasting began that the cornstarch-thickened gravy would have inferior texture and flavor, it actually turned out to be quite good. Admittedly, it was a bit thinner in body and more acidic in flavor than the roux-based sauces, but it was acceptable.

Overall, though, the dark roux proved to be the best thickener. It added a subtle depth and complexity to the sauce that the other options did not. It can also be made ahead of time, which gives it a slight edge over the other methods, which require last-minute whisking.

To this dark roux, we added turkey stock made from the neck and giblets. Cooking the sauce over low heat for half an hour or more helped develop the flavor, but the resulting gravy was still pale and lacked punch. We then tried using a bulb baster to remove fat from the roasting turkey and using this as the base for the roux instead of the butter. This tasted fine but was not an improvement over the butter version. We soon discovered, however, that the trick was to take this basic brown sauce—prethickened—and enrich it with pan drippings.

Pan drippings are the source of gravy's allure and its challenge. That gorgeous mahogany-colored goo that congeals at the bottom of a roasting pan is one of the best-tasting things on earth, a carnivore's ambrosia. But we found that to get dark brown pan drippings with a complex range of flavors, you need to roast your turkey over aromatic vegetables—chopped onions, carrots, and celery—as well as some fresh thyme sprigs. We also found it necessary to keep an eye on the pan, adding water or stock whenever things started looking too dry.

After deglazing the pan with wine and simmering off the alcohol, we strained the resulting wine sauce into the roux-thickened broth, crushing the remaining herbs and vegetables with a wooden spoon to extract their juices. The result was worth the effort. After a quick simmer and an adjustment of the seasonings, we had an intense and richly flavored sauce that captured the familiarity and comfort of traditional American gravy but that also hinted at the sophistication of a fine French brown sauce.