Chicken Gravy

A roast chicken without gravy is a fine thing, but a roast chicken with gravy is the whole story. The one makes the other feel finished. Sunday lunch, a Wednesday in January, a cold plate of leftovers on a quiet night, all of them improved by a small jug of something warm poured over the top.

This is the kind of gravy you make without thinking, while the chicken rests on its board and the potatoes finish crisping. Ten minutes, mostly with a wooden spoon in your hand, scraping the dark bits from the bottom of the tin. Those dark bits are the whole point. They're what the oven has been quietly making for you the last hour and a half. Don't waste them.

Chicken gravy is paler than beef gravy, and it should be. It's meant to taste of the bird, not of itself. A good one is golden and glossy, with enough body to coat a roast potato but not so much that it sits on the plate like paste. Lighter. Cleaner. The kind of sauce you want to mop up with the last corner of bread.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago, on the back of a page about a November roast: "Pan, flour, stock, patience. That's all it needs." I've never had reason to change it.