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[ Back to the main Bob's Chicken Gravy page ]
[ Makin' Gravy with a Meat Grinder (illustrated) ]

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Tired of all that grinding? Or the pink splatter from the blender? Using a pressure cooker can make preparing Bob's Chicken Gravy a lot easier. The pressure cooker will soften the bones so that they go through most blenders easily. What's that, you're concerned about the nutritional quality not being as good? I'm not qualified to answer those concerns, but here is a quote from Bob, from a post in FML 3146:

I support the use of pressure cooking because it shortens cooking times, causing less damage to the basic food components.

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Items used in this guide:

• Pressure cooker (doesn't need to be very big or fancy, Wal-Mart has them for around $30).
• Small chef's knife, small cleaver, and poultry shears for cutting the chicken apart (optional but I recommend it to shorten cooking time)
• One fairly large stock pot
• One saucepan
• Plastic cutting board dedicated to only gravy making because the hacking stage causes it to get deep cuts that are hard to clean.
• A couple of spatulas and stirrers
• Wire whisk
• Whatever storage things you're going to use to store the gravy
• Gravy ingredients (also listed below)

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As usual, there's more than one way to liquify a chicken, and this page simply tells how I've chosen to do it. My steps:

• First be sure you understand the pressure cooker - if you're not used to them, read the pressure cooker's manual, because you can get seriously hurt with these things if you're not careful.

• Next, cut the big easy chunks of meat and fat (breast, skin, fat around the neck area) off the bird. Cook these boneless parts separately with the giblets in a saucepan with some water (around a cup is usually fine for me). I like to cook it as little as possible, and doing those parts separately lets me control how much they get cooked.

• You're left with the bony parts. I like to use a cleaver to put a couple of cracks in the biggest leg bones, to make them easier for the blender.

• Then, throw the bony parts into the pressure cooker, enough water to cover everything, and put it on high heat. The weight on the cooker will begin to rock when it gets up to pressure, mine is 15 PSI. Reduce the heat to the minimum required to keep the weight rocking and start timing. One half hour is plenty for the roasters I use. I suspect that if you just dump the whole chicken in without cutting it up, then you would need to increase the time.

• When the time is up, cool the pressure cooker under a running stream of water from the tap until it depressurizes, and wa-la! Bony chicken soup! Do Not take the lid off of the pressure cooker until it has depressurized! If you're going to add kibble, it works best to throw it in with the soup so that it gets soft and absorbs some liquid before it goes into the blender.

• Throw the separately cooked boneless bits in with the stuff in the pressure cooker, stir it with a big spoon to get it mixed up, and then start blending it, maybe two cups at a time. Fill your blender's pitcher about half full, because if you fill it to the brim, there will be nasty hot chicken splatter everywhere. When you blend, hold the lid down tight. To prevent the mixture from being too thick for the blender, add enough broth to just cover the meat and bones in the blender's pitcher. With the first bit, add the eggshells (3-4) to the blender and then throw a little chicken on top of it and then blend that bit up especially well, so that the shells get smashed into tiny tiny specks. Dump that out into the big stock pot when it's blended, then repeat until it's all done. Sometimes I run out of broth and need to add some water to thin it enough to blend.

• After it's all done, let it cool down and then add the rest of the ingredients: 2 Tablespoons Metamucil (or fine bran or whole oats), 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil, 1 Tablespoon Ferretone, 2-4 Tablespoons Honey, 1 Tube of Nutrical. Blend it well with a wire whisk (prevents lumps of metamucil or nutrical from not getting mixed in well enough). I let it cool first so that the vitamins in the Nutrical aren't harmed by excess heat.

• Now just get it into whatever storage containers you're going to use. I like those little Zip-Loc containers - the smallest ones work out just right for my crew. Lots of people are very happy with ice cube trays as well.

This sounds long, but I can do the entire thing from taking the bird out of the fridge to putting nice little containers of gravy into the freezer in about an hour and a half...