OMFGravy!!

So Wednesday night I tried something new in the kitchen. I had a hankerin' for some pasta, so I thought I would heat up some canned chicken breast (from Costco) and boil up a box of elbows. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about sauce for the pasta, but since I had a bit of bacon grease still in the pan from breakfast earlier in the day, I thought, "Gravy!"

One problem. I've never made gravy before. In just under 40 Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners that my mom and/or sisters made while I grew up in the family home, I had never quite gotten around to watching and learning exactly how one makes gravy. I knew it had something to do with pan drippings and flour...but that's about it.

So, thinking I can figure out just about anything, I boiled the water and got the pasta going, decanned the chicken chunks and got them warming gingerly in a pan, heated up the bacon grease, pulled out the bag of flour, and experimented.

I sprinkled some flour into the grease and was just a little uneasy as it bubbled up. It settled down fairly quickly, and so things were going smoothly. It didn't seem like quite enough, so I added some more flour. And then some more. It was coming along nicely, but still seemed a little loose. A little more flour and it seemed just about right.

I drained the water off the chicken chunks and slid them out of the pan and into the "gravy." Suddenly the "gravy" thickened into a paste, and glommed on to the pieces of chicken in a very ungravy-like manner.

I plated some elbows, dumped the chicken-chunk-paste on top and sat down to a nice freshly made dinner.

And it was awful. I'm no great cook, but aside from occasionally burning a few things beyond taste, I've never been unable to eat something I've made. I thought I was going to hurl!

I rolled the pasty chicken chunks off and ate just the pasta, and I threw the chicken away.

Only then did I go to the internet and look up "gravy for idiots," and I actually learned something!

Take two...
Thursday night I was contemplating my dinner choices again. I still had four-fifths of Wednesday night's pasta in the refrigerator. I felt cheated on the gravy idea that I botched. So...

Was I ready to try it again? Absolutely. The bacon grease was already there, waiting in the pan since this morning's breakfast. I threw a steak on the grill outside and actually finished cooking that before I started anything else. I put about a cup and a half of cooked pasta and a little bit of water in a small skillet and covered that over a very low flame. I got the grease warmed up and started adding flour and stirring. This time I knew to stop at two tablespoons of flour, and to let the mixture get a little pasty, and then I added just one cup of milk, stirring it in slowly, just a little bit at a time. It started to get a little too thick, so I added just another splash or two of milk.

In just a few minutes it looked perfect! But what about the taste? I sampled a bit, and determined it needed salt and pepper. As I was still sampling it, I thought I had added too much salt, so I decided it was gravy. I uncovered the meat, dumped the pasta onto the plate, poured all of the gravy (what, was I going to save some for later?) over the pasta, and sat down to eat.

And?

HOLY CRAP! Was it GOOD! It was another one of those moments in my nascent culinary journey that I couldn't believe I had made it, it tasted so damn good! And the fact that I sit here at the computer several hours later instead of doubled over a toilet proves that not only was it good, but it was edible!

So... Gravy? Check.



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