Looking for a tasty twist on your regular gravy? Apple cider gravy has a delightful tang and a light fruitiness that beautifully complements a holiday dinner to make it even more special, or adds loads of great flavour to a simple weeknight meal.
You don't want to mess with holiday traditions too much, but sometimes just a little tweak can add a touch of delicious excitement. This apple cider gravy still fulfills that need for a rich, luscious gravy to slather over your mashed potatoes, savoury stuffing, and roasted turkey, but it's got the added whiff of autumn fruitiness that a hit of tangy, slightly sweet, fresh apple cider gives to it.
*Note: It's also a great gravy recipe if you're not roasting a bird, and just want an easy and delicious gravy for a regular meal.
It's an Apple Cider Pressing Party!
This fall we held our annual apple cider making workbee with a small group of family and friends. We picked the apples from our three apple trees (we used to have five, but sadly one tree didn't survive the winter and one went on strike for unknown reasons this year) and one pear tree. We got got four big pails of juice. Two were shared out among our helpers to enjoy as fresh, sweet cider, and two we made into sparkling hard cider which we'll enjoy over the winter and into next summer.
What a fun day it always is. We have a great crew of friends and family to help. There's lots of work for everyone. Some wash the apples and cut out any bad spots. A couple sets of willing hands pick the tiny crabapples which add a hit of intense, tangy flavour to the cider.
A couple of people man the grinder that my dad built years ago; one person feeds apples into the hopper while the other pokes into the jumble of whizzing teeth with a sturdy stick to make sure the apples keep moving through and get properly ground up - not a job for the faint of heart!
Then two or three more people fill the cider press with the ground apples and use their muscles to turn the lever connected to a heavy metal plate that presses down on the apples and squeezes out all their sweet juices.
The delicious reward for all that work is to fill our cups right from the press and take those first sips of wonderfully sweet and fresh apple cider. You can taste that it's been pressed from crisp apples picked that morning. Nothing compares to the amazing fresh flavour, and we all drink as much as we want as we work.
The last jobs are to empty the press after each batch, fill the wheelbarrow with the spent apple pulp, and then dump it onto the huge compost pile in the garden. The pulp will go full cycle and help fertilize next year's crop.
After an afternoon of hard work, fun, and camaraderie in the invigorating autumn air, we head over to the firepit to roast a few sausages and continue the merrriment.
Everybody takes a jar of fresh apple cider home . . .
. . . and we have lots more to enjoy. We freeze jugs of fresh cider to drink in the winter and make some of it into hard cider (with my mom's help). I also have fun coming up with recipes to use the fresh apple cider in, like this:
- Spiced Hot Apple Cider (plus photos of our first apple pressing day)
- these Apple Cider Glazed Carrots
- a tasty Apple Cider Harvest Soup (and our second annual pressing)
- and this luscious 2-Ingredient Apple Cider Syrup (with photos of another cider pressing day).
What You'll Need for Making Apple Cider Gravy
For gluten-free apple cider gravy, make sure to use sweet rice flour instead of all-purpose flour and use tamari or gluten-free soy sauce instead of regular soy sauce. Make sure the chicken broth (or vegetable broth) is gluten-free, too.
Kitchen Frau Tip
If you've got turkey drippings, use the fat to replace some of the butter and the juices to replace some of the chicken stock, to make an even more flavourful gravy.
How to Make It
You'll start with making a roux, which is really just a French word for cooking together butter and flour to make a paste. I've used sweet rice flour to make it gluten-free, but regular all-purpose flour works just as well. You'll take it one step further and cook it until the flour browns to the beautiful rich colour of milky coffee. This adds a bit of caramelized flavour and also helps colour the gravy, since a poultry gravy can often be on the pale side.
Add in the seasonings: onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a spoonful of poultry seasoning to give it that holiday dinner flavour.
Now add a few tablespoons of the chicken stock or apple cider and cook & stir until it is smooth. Keep adding the liquid, a bit at a time, stirring until it is incorporated after each addition. Switch to a whisk as the apple cider gravy becomes thinner. A bit of soy sauce helps add saltiness, rich colour, and umami flavour.
Voilà, you have a rich, smooth, silky apple cider gravy to add a touch of autumn class to any meal you're serving.
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Guten Appetit!
Apple Cider Gravy
Ingredients
- ¼ cup (60 g) butter
- 4 tablespoons (¼ cup/35 g) all-purpose flour or 5 tablespoons sweet rice flour
- 1 tablespoon onion powder or granulated onion
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning or dried ground sage
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce (gluten-free, if necessary)
- 2½ cups (600 ml) chicken or turkey stock
- 1½ cups (360 ml) fresh apple cider (fresh-pressed unsweetened, unfiltered apple juice)
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a medium-sized heavy-bottomed saucepan and stir in the flour or sweet rice flour. Cook and stir over medium-high heat until the roux turns a deep golden brown, the colour of milky coffee.
- Add the onion powder, garlic powder, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper and stir to mix it in.
- Slowly add the chicken stock, a little bit at a time and stirring until smooth after each addition. It will get thick and lumpy with each addition of liquid, but then smooth out as you stir it. Once you've added a bit of liquid, switch to using a whisk so it whisks any lumps out more easily.
- Add the soy sauce and apple cider and whisk until smooth. Bring the gravy to a boil and cook it over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until it is thickened to your liking. If it's a bit thin, cook it for a little longer, but keep in mind that it will thicken slightly as it sits.
- Makes about 4 cups (960 ml) of gravy.
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