Turning chicken stock into gravy and other stock questions

rachbc

To make PROPER gravy - pour the most of the fat out of your roasting tin, put it on a med heat and stir in a spoon of flour to make a roux, scrapping up all the yummy sticky bits on the tin (these will give so much flavour to your gravy). Stir in your stock/ water/ wine and bring up to the boil to thicken. Season to taste - I some times add a quirt of lemon, a teaspoon of quince jelly or similar to ring the changes. Delicious.

KingL

Thanks for pointers, all. I tried it out as a science experiment... Actually - it looks like the energy element is pretty insignificant.

2 hours on a low simmer (mains gas) used 0.0928 cu meters of gas, which is just 1.3p (at 13p a cu meter)

My slow cooker is about 200W, so 2 hours is 0.2 x 2 kWH @ 14p/unit would have been 5.6p

[although something must be wrong with my maths somewhere, coz the back of my gas bill says that 1 cu m of gas is equivalent to 11.17kWH, so the gas expended here would be about 1kWH - more than double the energy of the electricity and yet a quarter of the cost - is gas really that much cheaper than electricity?)]

Actually the cost-kicker here was the veggies. £1.57 for 2 big leeks in Tescos anyone?! Total veggie cost around £3.00 !! It had better be good now

WhiteHorse

KingL wrote: »

Actually the cost-kicker here was the veggies. £1.57 for 2 big leeks in Tescos anyone?! Total veggie cost around £3.00 !! It had better be good now

Make sure you buy seasonal veg as they're cheaper. Preferably off the market as supermarket veg are always more expensive.

I would put in a couple of onions, plenty of carrots and (towards the end), cubed potatoes. Maybe something else if it was to hand or I felt like it. You could add pearl barley too. Cost minimal.

And don't forget the parsley dumplings! Good fillers, tasty and very cheap.

wantai

KingL wrote: »

Actually the cost-kicker here was the veggies. £1.57 for 2 big leeks in Tescos anyone?! Total veggie cost around £3.00 !! It had better be good now

Farmfoods do a descent size bag of frozen leeks for £1. If you have one near you, that is.