Add Leftover Sauce to Soups and Stews
By now, all of your turkey sauce is eaten, frozen, or tossed, but gravy over fries, potatoes, and chips in my house is a busy winter. I make sauce before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, and After Thanksgiving, which turns into a freezer full of sauce.
This is not a bad thing, as it means I’m always a few steps away from fried potatoes with sauce, but I’m always looking for new and interesting ways to use the sauce. I try to support and encourage the innovation of sauces, the creativity of the sauces, the shine of the sauces. Just the other day, such an innovation appeared in my personal messages on Twitter, when one of my favorite readers sent me the following:
If you’re making too much gravy, add a dollop of curdled mixture to your homemade soup.
I know many of you will want to comment that you’ve never heard of too much sauce, but please refrain from this boring joke. If that helps, rename it “bonus gravy,” but try to focus and appreciate the magnificence of the aforementioned gravy.
As you probably know, the gravy is made up of broth and dressing, making it savory and thick – the perfect addition to a soup or stew that requires a bit of umami and body. The more it curdles out of the fridge, the better it will be in your soup. (This jelly-like consistency indicates the presence of collagen, namely, collagen gives broth, broth, and soup a pleasant mouthfeel.)
This little hack is obviously very easy to do. Take a large spoonful of leftover or “bonus” gravy and add it to a boiling pot of soup or stew. Taste it and repeat as needed until it tastes good and feels right in your mouth, or until you run out of gravy. Then make more sauce.