Why do people like gravy so much?

[PuppyMonkey]

I'm the only person in Britain who doesn't like gravy, I reckon.

It makes everything on the plate soggy, tasting of brown gravy.

I'm having steak pies today, made with a rich sauce inside and nice crumbly shortcrust pastry. And I just know that DP and kids will insist in having gravy too. Making the crumbly pastry all soggy and gloopy and everything taste of wet.

Also ruins Yorkshire puddings and Sunday dinner.

I don't get it.

I don't like gravy! I enjoy the taste of everything without. I feel like everything just taste like textured gravy with it

How can you not like gravy?! It’s a British staple!

I’m having pie, mash and gravy tonight. Cannot wait!

LisaSimpsonsbff I ate ketchup for the first time ever last month. I am mid 40s.

I was surprised to find it OK but I wouldn't seek it out again.

Puppymonkey on the fateful dinner at PILs there was also much excitement about tinned custard At this point I just refused to eat any further.

Oh no, now I am going to have to have some custard!!

I’m a southerner who loves gravy, my il’s are northern and will occasionally have a spoonful of brownish water on a roast.

Gravy is just lush. But then I like all moist accompaniments - custard, cream, curry sauce, mushy peas.... I usually have about a 50/50 ratio of food to moist.

I hate gravy too

I hate gravy. There are several accomplished cooks in my wider family. I grew up with non-packet gravy. Still hate it!

Not keen on custard or any other sauces, come to think of it. Maybe that's the problem.

I’m with you OP! I love a nice crunchy roast potato and never understand why anyone would want to pour gravy all over it, making it soggy.

I'm just confused at what the sauce in the meat pie is if it isn't gravy. What pie is it, OP?

Love good gravy, the kind that you cooks for hours. I'm still trying to get it right!

Also not a fan of drowning a delicious pudding in custard I like it, and will have a bit - but it shouldn’t be the main part of the dish.

Red onion gravy ....saute red onions in garlic, ginger, soy sauce and sugar until caramalised .
Then add vegetable stock and thicken with flour if required....delicious and veggie/ vegan.
Your'e welcome!

I can’t stand gravy. I’m not British though and don’t quite get the obsession with it. I’ve had countless people try to woo me with their gravy that will change my view forever about the insipid brown stuff. Nope. Still don’t like it and never ever make it at home .

Some of you in this thread are definitely my people.

Proper gravy cannot be insipid. Impossible! And my roasties are so crunchy they need some wet homemade tasty gravy

To be fair, crap gravy is far more common than good. My joy when eating in really good restaurants is always the sauces, because the prep, effort and time involved in making those reductions is well beyond anyone in my house.

I've read the word gravy so many times it has ceased to have all meaning.
Given the meal you have described, I agree with you op. The pie has sauce, adding bisto would ruin it.
Growing up I hated gravy. I thought it was a weird almost black and very salty sauce. This is because my mother would only ever use gravy browning, not even bisto! She used it for every meat, so even chicken tasted of beef. Bletch.
If we were really unlucky she'd add the browning and then not stir it enough so you'd get brown water with big lumps like elderly blood clots. Double bletch.
I make my gravy from meat juice, fried onions and veg. I like it on the meat and green veg, but not the roasties. It is only supposed to have a gentle flavour and I'm not at all offended if people don't have it, on account that I put it on the table in a gravy boat and people help themselves.
Actually, I was offended by my mum over gravy.
I cooked the entirety of Christmas dinner. I made proper gravy. I slaved over that meal! The first thing out of my mum's mouth - "Your gravy's the wrong colour!"
Yeah mother, turkey gravy isn't supposed to be the colour of tar!
Bubble and squeak - now that's the one meal I do put plenty of gravy on!

Right the pie is eaten. It's from a little farm shop whoever asked. Very nice.

So it had a filling of lots of meat and what I would call a sauce, rather than a gravy. It wasn't all runny, just made the meat tender. I couldn't have eaten it if it had gravy poured on top.

Is the sauce a meaty sauce? Because really I think lots of people would call that gravy!

I'm not snobby about anything really but people that smother their food in gravy..urgh...seems so common

It was a rich meaty sauce contained within the pie that didn't run all over the plate and cover my spuds and carrots. It wasn't brown goo covering all my plate, so I liked it. Because I don't like gravy, have I mentioned that?

To my regret, I'm related to some gravy haters. They once served up a "roast dinner" sans gravy

Fortunately they'd put some ketchup on the table for their toddler as it was necessary to put something on to the meat to make it chewable. I thought it might have been tough pork but apparently it was turkey. And something was needed to give some taste to the drowned remnants of the carrots. (I'm only exaggerating slightly for dramatic effect, it was bad!) Never a mint/ cranberry/ apple sauce available to enhance a meal. Food must be as dry as the Atacama Desert, boiled beyond taste and bland, so bland. (I refuse to cook for them as I can't face criminally damaging food enough for them to enjoy)

It's definitely better to have gravy available for a guest to pour themselves, either to enhance a good roast or render a bad one edible!

As for my home made duck gravy for Christmas Day...

So, the pie was very much like this - no carrots in mine though.

Mystified as to how gravy makes Yorkshire puds soggy.Take puds out of oven and the centre falls in to make a dip for you to put your gravy in leaving the edges crispy.
However when I eat the rest of my roast(after the pud),I do not have gravy.

Do people really still eat pies? And gravy? And chips? And fish fingers? Isn’t this stuff we left behind in the 70s?

No tatiana no one eats pies or gravy or chips. Definitely not.

Hothead, you're mystified as to how pouring something wet on something really absorbent makes that absorbent thing soggy?

My Yorkshire puddings are fluffy all over not all sunken in the middle. That's how I like them.