Well hello, childrens. I know it's been some time since I've posted a new blog, but I've been spending most of my time these days working at an actual job for money, so I haven't had much time for folderol and frippery. However, with the holidays well upon us, I do get some time off, and I get to do a lot more of two things I like: cooking and drinking.
This year's Thanksgiving was one of the best I've had in years. My husband and I got to spend time with family and friends, and I got to go completely apeshit in the kitchen. Some truly magical stuff happened there, I gotta tell ya, and Paula Deen would be proud of the amount of calorie-bombing goodness I crammed in there. Let some trendy women's magazine scold you about healthy holiday alternatives, if that's what you're into; if you're reading this blog to collect recipes, chances are you don't give a shit.
So here you go. Installment One of a slew of recipes guaranteed to give you The Itis. Today, we start with the topping.
Mama's Fat-Ass Duck & Mushroom Gravy
What Y'all Need:
About 1 1/2 cups of duck fat. Delicious, delicious duck fat, root of all that is tasty.
About 1 cup of bird drippin's from a roasted turkey or chicken.
Around 2 cups of all-purpose flour.
3-4 cups of hot bird stock.
1 carton of mixed mushrooms, diced. I used white button and portabella.
1/2 of a nice-sized sweet onion, diced.
Some white pepper.
What Y'all Do:
Get out your 5-quart Dutch oven (or if you don't have one, a big pot or pan, but seriously, get a Dutch oven. TJ Maxx, like 60 bucks!) and warm it up on the stove-top at medium-low heat. Drop about 2 tablespoons of duck fat in that bad boy and let it melt, then toss in your onions and fry 'em up for a couple of minutes. Then add in your mushrooms. Let the onions and mushrooms cook together for another minute or two, then add in the rest of your duck fat and start stirring.
Once everything's evenly coated and glistening, start slowly adding your flour. You want it to integrate with the fat and form a dense paste. You can reserve back some of your flour, because if you're like me, you don't measure anyway and you just eyeball everything. Anyway, you want that paste to get just this side of golden-brown, and you should be kinda struggling to stir that delicious mess. At this point, pour in your bird drippin's, dust it with a little more flour, and stir until everything's pretty much evenly mixed. Then slowly add in your stock and keep stirring. Do not stop stirring; you don't want this stuff to stick. Keep adding stock and cooking it up until it's nice and thick, but do not let it boil. Add white pepper to taste.
This will make almost a half-gallon of gravy. You can hook you up an I.V. bag and just mainline it if you want to go straight to coronary-town, but I recommend ladling it tenderly over your holiday feast, and the leftovers you'll be eating for the next week, and spreading the damage out a little.
Keep checking back for more holiday recipes, and start prepping that nap couch.
