Making BC's Chicken Gravy
How to make Bob Church's Chicken Gravy, with pictures!
This guide is an adapted version of the one that was originally put together by our friends at Triangle Ferret Lovers. (TriFL is in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina, area) It describes one of the ways to make Bob's Chicken Gravy. Please note that this is not the only way to make it but it works very well! Other methods will be added in the near future, like the one using the pre-ground whole chicken product purchased from Hare Today.
Meat Grinder Method: An Illustrated Guide
Items used in this guide:
- Hand crank meat grinder (Where to find a good meat grinder)
- Small chef's knife
- Small cleaver
- Poultry shears
- Two fairly large stock pots
- One small saucepan
- Plastic cutting board dedicated to only gravy making because the hacking stage causes it to get deep cuts that are hard to clean.
- A couple of spatulas and stirrers
- Wire whisk
- Whatever storage things you're going to use to store the gravy
- Gravy ingredients (listed below)
Begin with a fairly large roasting chicken on a cutting board. To the left, the neck & gibblets on a plate. In the middle, is the first of the tools: poultry shears, cleaver, & a small chef's knife. Other ingredients not pictured: the extra chicken fat left in the refrigerator. Rinse the chicken inside and out under tap water.
The first step is to cut the chicken up into parts. If you haven't done it before and don't want just start wacking away at the poor carcass, check out the guide: How To Cut Up a Chicken. This stage is prep, you're just getting the chicken into pieces. Some gravy makers report that is is handy to cut the breast meat into strips an inch or two wide using the poultry shears. Also use the shears to cut through the ribs and smaller bones, as well as to cut the skin and fat into small pieces.
