How to Make 'The Best Gravy in the World,' According to Sandra Lee
- Sandra Lee, host of various cooking shows, shares her Thanksgiving menu featuring herb-butter roasted turkey, cornbread stuffing, steamed broccoli, and her secret fruitcake.
Sandra Lee is busy. The queen of semi-homemade has been all over our TVs for decades, serving as the host and executive producer of many shows: Semi-Homemade Cooking , Dinner Budget Showdown on ROKU, and Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, to name a few.
It's safe to say she's done her fair share of Thanksgiving cooking and hosting, so she's definitely fit to consult for all of your turkey day inquiries.
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What's on Sandra Lee's Thanksgiving Menu?
Parade got the chance to chat with Lee about all things Thanksgiving in 2024.
After we chatted about all things decor, we had a few more pressing questions to ask, including getting some info on what she serves on that beautifully decorated table. In a surprise to no one, she had everything figured out.
For Thanksgiving, there will be an herb-butter roasted turkey, cornbread stuffing (that she cooks inside the bird ), steamed broccoli florets with butter-toasted sliced almonds and her 'very secret, very sacred fruitcake,' which she serves during the entire holiday season .
And then, in passing, she mentioned that she makes 'the best gravy in the world.' You can't drop phrases like that in front of us without a follow-up question (or three). Here's how Sandra Lee makes her famous gravy, so you can make it at your house too.
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How to Make the Best Gravy in the World, According to Sandra Lee
To really celebrate like Lee, serve this rich gravy on mashed sour cream potatoes.
The base of Lee's gravy is a broth she makes with the giblets, the turkey bits that are in that packet that you find inside the turkey cavity. She covers them in water and simmers them for her broth. "I simmer them for a long time, maybe 10 hours," she says. Once the stock is done she puts it in the fridge until it's turkey time so the broth can continue to deepen in flavor.
Once the turkey is out of the oven, Lee makes a roux with equal parts oil and flour, cooking it down until it's nice and brown. She adds the drippings from the turkey, which includes some of the "delicious crumbly bits" from the stuffing. The addition of the stuffing bits means it won't be a totally smooth gravy, but that's just fine with Lee.
She adds her simmered down stock to the gravy, and if she needs more liquid to thin the gravy, she'll whisk in some turkey stock. "I buy the turkey stock early because it's hard to find that," she says. "And then you're left with a chicken stock, which is not turkey stock." (She does say that you can use chicken stock in a pinch, though.)
She finishes the gravy off with some poultry seasoning and then lets it simmer down until it's the texture she likes. "I literally just reduce, reduce, reduce," she says.
Related: We Tried 17 Different Kinds of Store-Bought Gravy and You Can Buy the Winner at Walmart
This story was originally published by Parade on Nov 27, 2024, where it first appeared in the Food & Drink section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
