Sauce

Make Your Own Gravy

Making gravy for any occasion is easy once you know the not-so-secret formula.

Basic gravy is made by adding equal parts of a fat to a thickener then adding a warm liquid.

This recipe makes 2 cups of gravy.

Tools

Whisk
Liquid Measuring cup
Knife
Small pot
Strainer (optional)

Ingredients

FAT– butter, oil, bacon, turkey, chicken, beef, etc EQUAL PARTS TO Your Thickener
Thickener-Flour or cornstarch (if you use cornstarch your gravy will be light)
Warm Liquid – 2 cups of hot, low sodium stock (beef, turkey, chicken, etc)

Recipe

3 tablespoons of beef, chicken, turkey, drippings OR butter —Melted
3 tablespoons of flour stirred into the fat
Cook 1-2 minutes to cook the flour
Heat the stock
Whisk in hot stock gradually and bring to a boil. Whisk the whole time to prevent lumps.
The gravy will thicken once it comes to a boil keep stirring.
Turn heat to low until ready to serve.

DELISHTIPS

If your gravy is lumpy then pour the liquid through the strainer to remove the lumps

If your gravy isn’t as thick as you’d like, then make a paste out of a tablespoon of butter and flour in a bowl, add some gravy and whisk the butter-flour mixture until you have a really thick liquid, and then poured that into your gravy and bring to a boil again and it should thicken.

Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce

This is not your grandma’s tomato sauce recipe. And Bonus -There is no need for boiling, peeling, or seeding the tomatoes for this sauce!

I make this slow cooker tomato sauce every year because we love homegrown tomatoes and I always plant too many tomato plants.

This recipe makes about four (4) quarts of sauce. I freeze it and give it to my friends and family and then we have a taste of summer even in the middle of our Michigan winter. We use this as a pasta sauce, add some Parmesan cheese after you warm it, or add a little cream and eat it as a soup with grilled cheese. So delish!

Cut Fresh Tomatoes

Tools

• Slow cooker / Crock Pot
• Cutting board
• Large knife
• 12” sauté pan
• High powered Blender
• Butchers twine (optional)
• Ladle
• Kitchen towel
• Saucepan
• Quart sized zip-top freezer bags
• Cookie sheet (optional)

Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce-Ingredients

◦ One large onion chopped ( about 2 cups)
◦ One large carrot or two small carrots cut into chunks
◦ Tablespoon of minced garlic

MMM Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce

◦ a cup or so of fresh herbs like basil thyme and oregano I make a BOUQUET GARNI*
◦ 2 teaspoons of salt
◦ 1 teaspoon of pepper
◦ 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
◦ half teaspoon of garlic powder
◦ half a teaspoon turmeric
◦ 1/4 cup of water or wine
◦ 12 cups of chopped tomatoes-about 12 tomatoes

RECIPE Directions

1. Sauté the chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. On medium-high heat. You want a hard sear on them to get some brown color. It will take about 10 minutes.
2. just add all the other ingredients into your slow cooker. Remove any bad spots on your tomatoes and remove the stem/core of your tomato and roughly chop them.
3. Set your slow cooker to buy for four hours or low for 6 to 8 until all the vegetables are broken down and soft.
4. Fill your blender halfway full of your tomato mixture. Cover the top of your blender with a kitchen towel and your hand. When you put hot liquid into a blender it expands and may take the top

Onions Cooking

off DO NOT OVERFILL YOUR BLENDER WITH HOT LIQUID. If you are worried then let your mixture cool overnight and blend it the next day.
5. Blend sauce until smooth. Pour your sauce into your saucepot and stir to combine. Refrigerate for up to one week**

**DELISHTIPS

I like to freeze the sauce in zip-top freezer bags. I fill them full and push the air out and freeze them flat on cookie sheets. That way they stack easily in my freezer and I have tomato sauce all winter long.

A BOUQUET GARNI is simply a bunch of herbs tied with butcher twine so that you can just lift the herbs out easily when they are done. You do not have to use this for the recipe you can just pick out the herbs after the sauce is done.

Freeze up the slow cooker tomato sauce