why did my gravy go so terribly wrong last night?

[bamboobutton]

I've made proper gravy hundreds of times but last night it was a complete disaster!

i skimmed 90% of the fat off as usual but when i added the flour it turned into a gloopy glue consistency, the more flour i added the gloopier it got.

i tried adding water and it went like watered down gloopy glue, i gave it a sniff and instead of smelling a chickeny aroma it smelt, well, just odd.

any ideas what caused this? could they have injected something into the chicken to bulk it up and charge more

it was an £8 free range chicken from Tesco.

luckily i had some emergency bisto in the cupboard.

This has happened to me too. I think it's the huge water content in the chicken. Do you have the chicken covered when you're roasting it? I have found that uncovering it for the last half hour works wonders. Most of the water evaporates and makes for much nicer gravy. Good luck.

was it your usual flour? have made perfectly good gravy with sr, but could it have been bread flour maybe?

i always add flour to fat only - if there are juices in the pan i remove the whole lot, scoop some of the fat off the top, add the flour to that then put the rest of the juices back once the flour's cooked out a bit. when you add flour to any form of liquid before it's cooked in the fat it can do that gloopy thing, but i've never found that effect the taste/smell that much.

They cannot inject "something" into the chicken to bulk it up and charge more, nor would the water content of the chicken have caused this.

It would have been down to the flour, sounds like you added too much, and also not enough fat in it, you really need to add flour to fat, not to the juices, so perhaps you skimmed off too much.

Once the flour is added to the fat and all mixed in, and you have the roux, then you add the liquid and stock etc.

i've always made gravy using the juices and skimming off most of the fat, thats how my mum and granny always made it and it's always turned out fine.

don't think it was the flour as its from the same bag that i used to make bechemel sauce the other day and used in the casserole today with no problems.

I didn't add too much to begin with as i always add it a heaped spoonful at a time and mix as i go. i kept adding more flour whilst thinking "wtf is going on with this?" hoping it would look like it normally does if more flour was added.

hmm, tis a mystery

and just to satisfy my own analness, delia makes it my way :p