Tonight our dinner plan was leftover meatloaf and reheated roasted veggies (carrots, parsnips, and red potatoes), but since the meatloaf was a bit dry on a reheat a few days ago I decided to whip up a packet of that “brown” gravy stuff and heat the meatloaf up in that. I’ve done that before with roast beef and it works, even though it’s hardly fancy.
But when I went to start it, we had no envelopes of the brown gracy! Oh no, what to do?
Well, we did have some Organic Better Than Bouillon Beef Base in the fridge, so I poked around and found this recipe for Simple Beef Flavored Gravy. We didn’t have an onion* in the house but we do have some onion powder and some Kirkland dehydrated onion bits (which are excellent and incredibly inexpensive), so I made the recipe with some of those as substitutes. I followed the direction from comments on the recipe page to make the flour and the butter a roux first, then added the bouillon, then added the water and the onion stuff.
It worked! Still not fancy, still not as great as real, fresh gravy made from actual meat you’ve just roasted, but as a quick gravy knockoff, the recipe works. It was a bit salty; I’d suggest using unsalted butter instead. Also, a fresh onion probably would have been better but it was okay with the substitutes. Would be lovely with some lightly sauteed mushrooms added. It’s definitely a good beginning for some casserole potential, and had a fresher, cleaner taste than the brown gravy packets. The bouillon isn’t the healthiest stuff ever but it has less weirdo ingredients than the brown packets. Not bad for fast and on-hand!
The meatloaf cut up into it and heated that way also worked well. I also added about a half cup of frozen peas and let them heat that way as well. Pretty good for leftovers!
* Fun fact…the word ONION is NOINO when turned upside down. We call upside-down onions (and sometimes all onions) noinos in our house. We’ve done it for years, but more recently it provokes a reaction from our five year old so now it’s extra-fun. >:D
