Throwback Thursday: a gravy matter – how to get it jus right

Are gravy and jus the same thing? The answer is no… or not quite. It’s a simple matter of the first being thickened with flour or cornflour, and the second being reduced without a thickening agent. Gravy, consequently, is more substantial in texture but milder in flavour, while a jus will be thinner, but its flavour more concentrated. Both can be strained, for clarity. Gravy is more the domain of the home cook, while a jus is more cheffy.

Quite how concentrated a jus can be was demonstrated in my home last weekend, when my farmer-cowboy friend (who is also a trained chef who paid close attention at chef’s school) brought us 1.5 litres of his homemade beef jus. Not just a quickly thrown-together sauce made in merely a few hours. Oh no. This jus took an entire week to make. And a whole 9kg bottle of gas.

To assuage any fears of things that could go wrong during the sleeping hours, the gas stove was switched off at night and re-lit every morning.

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But first, more about these meaty sauces.

Rendering is key to a gravy. If you heat a heavy pan such as a skillet until it’s very hot, then put a thick-cut sirloin steak down on the pan with its fatty edge down, after a few minutes the juices from the fat will start to spill out. This is an example of rendering.

This also leads to caramelisation. The point where the fat touches the pan and the heat forces the juices out is also where the same juices caramelise. Those caramelised “bits” are packed with what we now called umami, an intense flavour hit that will flavour your gravy. Because what we have just described in these two paragraphs is the basis of how a gravy is made, and what it is.

Read more: Souper Tuesday: Biltong Soup

Fats and juices are rendered from a roast while it is cooking in the oven. Once cooked, the meat is removed and, in the old-fashioned way, the heavy black oven pan is put on to the hob, liquid is added, and that liquid is simmered away while it takes on the flavours of the caramelised juices and bits and pieces that have formed in the pan while being rendered. 

Classically, this is the art of deglazing. The French way, especially, is to use wine to deglaze the pan. White or red, depending on the meat you’ve cooked, or your choice. (You can use red wine for a poultry deglaze, even if white is most common.) But water or stock is also fine for deglazing, especially if you’re looking for a “cleaner” taste that is entirely about the actual flavours of the rendered and caramelised meat juices, rather than one enhanced and altered by wine. A liquor other than wine can also be used: sherry or port, or in our climes jerepigo or Hanepoot fortified wines; or a liqueur such as Cointreau or Drambuie, if you have the budget for those and want to really push the boat out.

Lots of scraping

There are other ways of forming a gravy, including the one I was brought up with. Every Sunday, there’d be a roast on the go in our Oranjemund kitchen. My mom would cook a joint of beef, often topside, or a whole chicken. Less often there’d be lamb. Either way, once the meat was cooked the pan would go on the stove top, where water would be added, followed by lots of scraping. Then the packet of Bisto or Brono would come out of the cupboard, a large spoonful of it would go into a cup, and milk or water would be added followed by much stirring to make it smooth.

This was poured into the pan while stirring and scraping to get as much value from the “bits” at the bottom of the pan as possible. It would soon thicken into a dark brown gravy.

When I was a young adult I decided to eschew those packet “gravies” and have not bought one for three or four decades. Instead, I prefer to reduce existing pan juices, often deglazed with wine or other alcohol, and, if it is not thick enough for my needs, thicken it with a little cornflour dissolved in water.

But there’s another way. We can get cheffy with it. Take days to make it, starting with the long, slow creation of a beef stock. Roasting the bones. Boiling them up with aromatics (onion, leek, carrot, celery, bay, peppercorns), and garlic too if you like. Add tomato purée for additional depth, richness and texture. And only much, much later use this stock to make your jus.

Astonishingly deep

I tasted, last weekend, the most astonishingly deep, velvety, indescribably glorious jus. It’s the one made by my farmer friend, who shuns the limelight so prefers not to be named, using bones and other offcuts after one of his cattle was slaughtered.

I was given some of this delectable jus, and you can see it in the photo of the sirloin I cooked this week for supper. I have never had a better, richer, more maddeningly delicious meat sauce anywhere. Even in the finest restaurant.

Don’t try this at home. Because you’ll need to start by slaughtering a cow. Unless you’re a cattle farmer.

Brown Gold: How the Cowboy made his week-long jus, in his own words

Use a massive pot, such as a Hart (brand) pot, also known as a dek. You need enough bones to fill it, about 10kg.

Roast the bones in the oven until well browned.

Meanwhile, roughly cut up 5 or 6 onions, 1kg of carrots, and a bunch of celery.

Layer bones and veg in the pot, but Do Not add any of the fat drippings or marrow.

Add 1 or 2 sachets of tomato paste, 5 or more bay leaves, a few cloves of garlic, peppercorns, and a few cloves. Pour in a bottle of Sherry or red wine. 

Top with cold water and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Let it simmer all day.

Switch off in the evening and skim any fat off the surface the next morning. 

Bring back to a simmer and let it simmer all day, topping up with water as necessary. Repeat for two or a maximum of three days. 

That’s your beef stock. 

Discard all the bones and veg and strain the rest of the beef stock. 

Bring the stock to a simmer and simmer the whole day. Brush down the sides every few hours but do not add any more water; the object being to reduce the stock into a thick jus. This may take up to another 4 days. Skim any fat that might still appear. 

When the jus coats the back of a spoon and leaves a snail trail after drawing your finger across it, it is the right consistency. 

It’s a process and the end result doesn’t yield much, but the resulting Brown Gold is well worth it. 

It may be used as is, flavoured with a herb of your choice or some wine/sherry or port added and then reduced back to the right consistency. May be used to enrich other sauces or stews much like a stock concentrate.

Now, you’re not likely to have the time (or a cow to hand) to make that precisely. Instead, use wine and then a good quality beef stock when deglazing the steak pan, and make a much easier jus, or gravy if you wish to thicken it with flour or cornflour.

This needed a fine slab of meat, and the Cowboy’s favourite cut for a steak is the sirloin. Here’s what I made for that stupendous jus…

Sirloin steak with shiitake mushrooms and fine jus

(Serves 2)

Ingredients

For the steaks and jus/gravy:

2 x 300g sirloin steaks, thick-cut

Salt

Peanut oil

Butter

The caramelised pan juices from cooking the steaks

A glass of good red wine

200ml good beef stock

Salt and black pepper to taste

For the mushrooms:

250g small shiitake mushrooms

A splash of soy sauce

Garlic salt (lightly)

Black pepper

Method

If the steaks are fridge-cold, bring them to room temperature for an hour or more. Wipe them down with a clean cloth or wads of kitchen paper. Salt them all over and let them stand on a plate in fresh air. Keep pets away.

Heat an iron skillet or heavy frying pan until very hot. Put the steaks in with their fatty edge down, without letting any of the meat touch the pan. This is one reason why they need to be thick-cut: so that you can balance them and stand upright without toppling over. But keep an eye; if they fall, swiftly get them back up again.

Let the fat caps render until they have totally browned and you can see the sizzling fat oozing out of them into the pan.

Add peanut oil to the skillet or heavy frying pan, and some butter. (I’m generous with butter for steak, but choose your own amount. At least 2 Tbsp, but I’d use more.)

Topple the steaks over into the fat. Grill on a high heat until they are cooked about a third of the way through (or less for rare), turn them over and cook the other side until they are how you like your steaks. Keep them warm under a foil dome (not tightly wrapped).

Add a glass of red wine to the pan, and grab hold of a flat-edged wooden spatula to scrape up all those caramelised bits. When the wine has cooked away, add the beef stock, turn the heat down a little, and reduce until you have a delicious jus. Strain it through a fine sieve into a small pot and reheat, seasoning with salt and black pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, in a small, heavy pan, on a moderately high heat, melt some butter and throw in the shiitake mushrooms. Toss them around for a minute or two, grind in some black pepper, add a touch of garlic salt, and add a little splash of soy sauce. Toss and serve with the steak. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on my favourite pan plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.