Jamie Oliver's Roast Beef Pan Gravy Utilizes Every Drop Of Flavor
If you're a fan of a hearty roast dinner and most especially the gravy, you're gonna love Jamie Oliver's roast beef pan gravy. While there are loads of reasons to love a good roast dinner (not the least of which are the slow-cooked, tender beef or the undeniably scrummy leftovers) one of the very best things to come of making a roast is the mouth-wateringly umami-laden pan gravy. When it's done right, pan gravy is deliciously flavor-packed, allowing you to utilize every drop of flavor left behind in your roasting pan to achieve that most coveted balance of the five flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami).
Oliver's gravy capitalizes on the flavor layering intrinsic to a traditional roast dinner — beef roasting atop root vegetables and caramelizing in the bottom of the pan with the juicy drippings of fat and collagen rendered during the low-and-slow cooking process. The result of these flavors coalescing in the heat of the oven is the most succulently savory amalgamation you may ever lay your tastebuds on.
Pan gravy is the pinnacle of all that flavor, a distillation of the entire meal in a glistening sauce that tops it off. With little effort, Oliver uses those pan drippings together with mashed roasted aromatics and vegetables, flour, wine, and broth, before finishing his gravy with the inclusion of one secret ingredient that he says "really helps this gravy sing:" jam.
Perfect roast beef pan gravy
If you want to make your pan gravy sing like Oliver's you'll need to add the following vegetables to the bottom of your roasting pan: Half a stalk of celery, one onion, a whole bulb of garlic, and two carrots (cut into large pieces), along with some bay leaves and rosemary.
Once the roast has finished cooking, Oliver removes it from the pan to rest, moving the roasting pan and all its vegetables back to the stovetop. He then sprinkles those roasted aromatics with a tablespoon of flour before smashing them flat and mixing it all into a thick paste. Adding a half glass of red wine, Oliver finishes with a big dollop of deeply colored jam before stirring in a liter of broth and letting it simmer for 30 minutes. For his last steps, Oliver pours off any resting juices from the beef into the gravy and sieves that gravy to a smooth consistency, simmering it in a pot on the stovetop to bring it back up to temp. With pan gravy this good, you won't want to miss a drop — so don't forget the Yorkshire puddings.