by Joseph Kelley

Created on: November 18, 2008

The great thing about cooking is that it is an art; anyone can take their perspective on anything and create to their hearts desire. Cooking is derived from passion and if you follow your hearts recipe then you can never be wrong'. Besides, variety is the spice of life.

However, gravy I get a little nit-picky about. Mostly because as a professional chef and saucier I know how to make a proper gravy, and it is not about thickness, it is about viscosity.

If you get most of your cooking knowledge from Rachel Ray or Emeril you will have no idea what I am talking about. So I will give a little background. Viscosity is defined as the resistance of a liquid to flow (a.k.a. its thickness). And when attached to a percentage it is used to define how much thickening agent should be added to an amount of liquid to create gravy. Traditionally in Classical French and Traditional European cuisines an 11.5% viscosity is used in all gravies and sauces. This percentage was derived by Aguste Escoffier, one of the world's most famous culinarians.

Of course, this percentage can only be obtained when making homemade gravies and is pretty simple. When making gravy from scratch you start out with a certain amount of stock. To get the viscosity percentage you multiply the amount of stock by .115. That is how much roux you will need to thicken the gravy. Roux is a 50/50 mixture of flour and butter and is made by melting the butter and then stirring in the flour over medium heat until it is golden brown (will smell like peanut butter when done and should have the consistency of wet sand). Let's say you have 10 cups of stock you need to thicken, multiply that by .115 and you get 1.15. So you will need 1.15 cups of roux (A little more than a1/2 cup of butter and cup of flour).

Once your roux is made add it to the stock and add flavorings as you see fit. When adding it to the stock you want to make sure there are no lumps in your gravy. So use a whisk and run it all over the bottom of the pan to ensure smooth gravy. Also, with roux you can sometimes get an undesired floury flavor. If you allow the gravy to simmer for 20 minutes there will be no trace of a floury flavor in it.

But how can you tell when you have reached 11.5% viscosity? You need to coat the bottom of a spoon with your gravy and then turn it over and run your finger through the liquid. If the sides of the path you just made through the gravy slowly move back to the center you are pretty close to 11.5%.

That is how proper gravy is made and as far as a thickness, 11.5 is thin gravy. So seeing as how this is the proper way to make gravy; thin or "runny" is preferred to thick gravy.

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