Sauce

Central Texas Giblet Gravy

Posted on November 21, 2007. Filed under: Poultry, Sauce, Side Dish |

There are a few different styles of giblet gravy. This recipe is based on my mother’s side of the family and has more in common with a sauce than a gravy. This goes well on cornbread or with bread based stuffings.

Supplies

Ingredients

A note on pots. I usually use a four quart pot to make the gravy, but a three quart pot works fine too.

A note on the eggs. Usually we prepare deviled eggs the night before Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and cook a few more eggs than we need to devil. The first step, if you do not have hard-boiled eggs on hand is the eggs.

A note on the onions. I usually use the white onions as they are not as powerful as the yellow onions and lend a sweeter flavor when cooked.

Preparation

(Note: You can fill and set the pots at about the same time, if you have the range space freed for two pots.)

Step 1: Fill your small pot with water, add salt, set to high. Have your eggs sitting on the counter. Once pot is boiling add eggs and set your timer. I have found that with three eggs and my range top, it takes about eight minutes to hard boil. The time will depend on how well your range and pot keep the heat. Once the eggs are cooked, drain the pot. If we are ready to dice the eggs see step 3. If we are not ready, set them in a bowl of cold water.

Step 2: Fill your pot with water, enough to cover the giblets when we add them. Set pot to high and add celery salt now. Once the water is boiling, add the turkey giblets. Set pot to medium. Usually this is being prepared at the same time as Thanksgiving dinner, and is left cooking while we prepare the side dishes. The giblets are finished when the meat falls of the neck bone when gently prodded with a fork.

Step 3:  We need to dice the onions and the eggs, and we might as well multi task. While we wait for the water to boil, go ahead and get your shallots or onion and get ready to cut them up. Get out your cutting board and chef’s knife.

  • If using shallots. Cut the roots off the shallots. Slice lengthwise then cut off the shoot and peel the skin off. Alternately you can blanch them in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, cut the root off and “pop” them out by squeezing the shoot. Dice the shallots. Place in small bowl to keep out of the way.
  • If using onion. Cut the onion in half, save the half of the onion you aren’t using for other recipes. I usually work with the shoot half of the onion and save the root half for later. Cut the shoot off the onion and peel the outer layer and skin off. This should be simple as the onion is cut in half. Dice the onion. Place in small bowl to keep out of the way.

Once we are done dicing the onion we wait for the eggs to finish hard boiling. When they are done we need to peel them. The easiest way is to run cold water from your tap and hold the eggs under it while you peel them. Once peeled, we need to get ready to dice them. You may have an egg slicer, if so, use it now to slice the eggs. If not, we will begin dicing. I prefer to start by slicing all the eggs length wise. I then get the slices in a little pile so that they are all aligned the same way. I take my knife and cut across the pile. The eggs are ready for the gravy, place them in a small bowl to keep them out of the way.

Step 4: Once the meat is falling off the neck bone, get your slotted spoon. Carefully remove the giblets from the pot and place on your cutting board. Let them cool. If you used just enough water it should be broth-like and flavorful, get a taster spoon and make sure. If too much water was used then it will be bland or even tasteless. You may have noticed the volume is less than when you started, that is ok, we lost some water to cooking.

We want to keep the broth, pour it in a container and set aside. Return the pot to the heat and add our diced shallot or onion to it. We want to sweat the shallot or onion, not saute. Once it is translucent and fragrant add the diced eggs and the broth we made when we cooked the giblets. We want the broth to get even more flavorful while we finish our preparations. Set pot on low.

Step 5: Now we need to start on the giblets. When they are cooled enough for you to handle we need to pull as much meat off the neck as we can. Once you have a little pile of neck meat, go through it and make sure there are no bits of bone in it. Toss it in the pot with the onions, eggs, and broth. Now we move on to the true giblets. We want them to be chopped very fine. They should all be quite firm and easy to handle. What I prefer to do is slice all of them lengthwise and set the slices in a pile. In this case we don’t need to align the slices. I then chop the pile, a method sometimes used in barbecue. You cut across the pile multiple times, when you have cut the pile as much as you can, you rearrange the pile to show any larger pieces and cut again. In barbecue we can have nice sized chunks, but here we need the giblets to be very fine. We will do this processes until when going though the pile we can no longer find chunks. This takes much longer than chopping beef for a sandwich, don’t get discouraged! Once we have our nice pile of fine chopped giblets, we will add it to the pot while stirring. You may find we have covered all the broth, that is ok.

Step 6: Now that we have all our meat in the pot, we will need to add chicken or turkey broth. Add the entire quart while stirring the pot. We should have a relatively thin soup consistency now. We are going to season before we thicken. Now is the time to add in all our spices! Be sure to keep stirring the pot while adding spices. Let the pot sit on low while we move on.

Step 7: Rinse the lid on the can of low sodium condensed cream of mushroom soup. Open the can of condensed soup. Once our pot is aromatic with the spices we added, we are ready to add the condensed soup. It will come out can shaped and is extremely thick, I recommend a big fork instead of a whisk. We want to add a little bit at a time so we can blend it in the broth. Using your big fork take a scoop out of the can and stir it in the broth until it is blended. Stir carefully, we don’t want to spill anything over the sides or on ourselves! Repeat until the can is as empty as you can make it. Once you can scrap no more out of the can, add some water in the can and swirl it around a bit to pick up what is left, add it to the broth.

Step 8: Taste the gravy and check the thickness. If you are not on a sodium restricted diet you may want to add salt to taste. If you didn’t use low sodium soup taste the gravy first before you add any salt. Any other spices you think it may be lacking, we add now. We also check the thickness. The soup should have thickened it up quite nicely, I do not add any flour as my family and I like this thickness. It should be thinner than breakfast style white gravy. If you find though that your gravy is too thin for you and your guests, get out your all purpose flour. Begin stirring the gravy and add the flour slowly. Add one tablespoon at a time and stir in thoroughly before adding any more. If adding flour, once done, you should lower the pot to simmer and let sit for ten minutes. Check the thickness again and it should be much thicker. If you find the gravy is too thick carefully add half a cup of water, while stirring the gravy. Add water slowly and check the thickness in between the half cups.

Congratulations you have made Central Texas style giblet gravy!

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