GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: Christmas

How To Make Gravy – GF Video

Easy how to make gravy recipe for turkey or chicken, for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or just dinner. Really good gravy is not hard to make, watch our gravy video to learn the steps. Chef Erica Wides joins Eric and walks us through the steps, and we learn some cool stuff about deglazing the pan and all.

How To Make Gravy – the basics

Here are the key steps to making great tasting gravy:

• Have some extra good chicken or turkey stock on hand. Store bought is ok, but buy the good stuff

• A quality white wine, bourbon, whiskey or hard cider will release unique flavor compounds

• When adding the alcohol to the pan, turn off the burner to prevent the alcohol from turning into flame.

• After adding the flour, bring the gravy to a boil so the starch molecules do their thing and thicken the sauce.

• The gravy will thicken more as it cools

In this how to make gravy video, we talk about Thanksgiving and Christmas and Holiday Cooking, you can apply this gravy recipe to all sorts of foods. If you roast meat in the oven, you can use the pan drippings and this gravy recipe to make a super cool tasting gravy to go with your meat. In other words, this is not just for the holidays and turkey.

And again, this proves to me that you do not have to have fancy equipment or foods to make a great tasting meal. I used store bought chicken, added some celery, carrot, and onion to make what is called a mirepoix, but is, in my mind, a bunch of vegetables underneath a chicken. But these vegetables are key to how to make gravy that tastes wow. Celery is one of those low key vegetables that is a secret flavor source for so many stocks.

We have a number of Thanksgiving recipe videos here for you, check them out and let us know your suggestions and comments below, always good to hear from you.

November 29, 2013
Roasting Turkey on a Charcoal Grill

oil skin with olive oil, salt & pepper if you want

Here we show you how to roast a turkey on a grill. we are using the charcoal method of cooking a turkey on a grill. the photos here will show you how to make your turkey tasted great on the grill.

add a meat thermometer

prep your charcoal burning grill, ours also has a propane lighter

light off and gray up 30 briquettes

divide, 15 per side

add a drip pan between the coals and add the grill

add the turkey (this is our T-Day bird, an heritage breed, Bourbon Red)

vents full open, top and bottom. start your timer: 1 hour intervals

relax. best of all, the turkey is out of the kitchen

every hour add 8 briquettes to each side. it usually takes 3 – 4 hours of cooking

Sydney naps in the ginger lilies near the grill, visions of turkey dance in her head. (obligatory GF dog pix)

A great bird roasted on the grill

December 24, 2011
Christmas Gift Wish List

Here comes Santa Claus! Here comes Santa Claus! Right down Santa Claus Way!

I Love Christmas! The gifts and friends. Parties that drag you out into the cold. Everyone is happier! Like many of you, I’m involved with more than one gardening project during the spring, summer, and fall. Winter rolls around and we can show case the fruits of our labors. Heat our kitchens with bread in the oven and stew on the stove.

As much as I would love to bake cookies or bread for everyone on my gift list, that’s not possible. My sister, is getting married in February and would KILL me if I made her cookies. She’s even sworn off baking until the big event. Poor thing.

Like Eric, I try to spend my money in socially responsible ways. Last year we adopted olive oil trees for my stepmom from nudo-italia.com.We got a mix flavor pack for ourselves and have really enjoyed it. I had asked for a donation to www.heifer.org and some beans from Rancho Gordo. I got the beans and lots of them.

I’ve put together a little list of interesting items what I think would make great gifts. Some items are handmade, others are locally made from sustainable materials, and almost all are found at local, independent shops.

You can never have too many cutting boards. These footed cutting boards from Gray Works Design look perfect for showing off that one perfect tomato I can seem to grow a year. If you don’t care for footed cutting boards, etsy.com has tons of other designs.

While still on the subject of cutting boards, some of us (me) insist on having cutting boards that are dishwasher safe. Thank you epicurean. The cutting board feels good to work on and is made from sustainable materials in an energy friendly factory. For my sister, I’m getting her the pastry board and rolling pin.

Everyone needs a dutch oven. Once you have one, you need two. One for bread, one for stew. Lodge makes some great cast iron dutch ovens, now they have some really good looking, affordable enameled dutch ovens.

What really caught my eye was the skillets. I don’t have a cast iron skillet.

In the Chicago we have an awesome kitchen supply store, Northwestern Cutlery. They call themselves the candy store for cooks and that’s right on the money. I take my work knives there and generally spend 15 to oh, 30 minutes wandering around and looking. They carry epicurean, lodge, le crueset, and more cooking and baking gadgets than you can imagine. Most importantly, they are an independent shop and have a good website for people outside of Chicago.

This is a little treat I picked up for myself a couple of months ago, the Sodastream Genesis. I love this gadget! I’ve used it almost every day since bringing it home. Lots of us love soda but hate the cans, hauling them back from the store, and most importantly, you can never run out of soda. Green Home Experts in Oak Park carries the sodastream, CO2 cartridges, and flavors.

Have a happy and safe holiday season!

December 16, 2010