The Secret To Flavorful Gravy Comes From A Rather Interesting Part Of The Chicken
What is gravy? By its standard definition, it's a sort of sauce made from drippings, fat, or stock whisked together with flour, milk, butter, or cream. By anyone else's definition, it's the light or dark brown stuff you pour over turkey, chicken, beef, pork, or mashed potatoes during dinner. Whichever definition you adhere to, you can probably agree that one thing you expect your gravy to be is rich and flavorful. After all, is it even gravy if it doesn't have any sort of savory flavor to it?
But how can you get flavorful chicken gravy? Some of you may recommend adding a lot of spices and seasonings so that it'll taste almost exactly like the gravy you can get at KFC. Others may recommend adding sauteed vegetables or roasted garlic into your gravy to give it a richer and more complex flavor. While these are all good ideas, a very good way to get the most flavor into your gravy is by using a very select part of the chicken: the giblets.
You've probably heard about giblets before, most likely from popular media poking fun at "chicken n' giblets," but you may not have any idea what the so-called giblet actually is. As it turns out, the giblet isn't actually a single part of the chicken like the breast or the wing. Instead, it's actually a collection of different organs and assorted parts, including delicacies such as the heart, the neck, the liver, and the famously fun-to-say gizzard.
Giblets are prized for being versatile
While you're probably more comfortable with ordering chicken breasts or chicken wings than you are with fried chicken hearts or grilled chicken necks, this isn't to say that the giblets — the assortment of various parts — don't have their uses. One of the said uses is to add a little bit of extra flavor to your gravy.
If you manage to get your hands on a bundle of giblets, whether it's through a local farmer or a particularly good butcher, you should first go about preparing a stock with them. The heart, the neck, the gizzard, and the kidneys are all great ways to add a richer, meatier flavor to your stock, especially the neck, as it's full of fats and minerals. The liver, however, is best kept out as it may give your stock, and the resulting gravy, a bitter taste. Simply add this assorted collection of chicken organs and parts to your stock and prepare it as you usually would. You then use this stock to make your gravy.
You don't necessarily have to add all of the giblets to make the gravy taste better. If you're only able to get a bag of chicken necks from your butcher or a few gizzards from a local farmer, those will work perfectly fine on their own.
You can also cook chicken giblets on their own
Chicken giblets are a very useful secret ingredient for adding extra flavor to your stocks, broths, and soups. But is it possible to cook the giblets on their own? Yes, it is possible and you may find that some of them actually make for a delicious meal.
It is entirely possible to prepare deep-fried gizzards. A popular method of doing this has you first brine the gizzards in a marinade or liquid to soften them, as gizzards are naturally tougher than white or dark meat, and then fry them. The flavor is described as being somewhere around the dark meat of chicken thighs or drumsticks. Chicken hearts can also be prepared in the same manner or roasted, with the resulting flavor being described as tasting like dark meat with a subtle metallic taste. Chicken necks, although somewhat lacking in meat, can actually be cooked and eaten similar to how you would eat corn on the cob, with the flavor having the same dark, gamey flavor common to gizzards and hearts.
Chicken giblets can indeed be fried, baked, roasted, or grilled the same as you would with chicken breasts or wings. Keep in mind that they have a much stronger flavor than what you may be used to; but, if you don't mind that, chicken giblets are good fried or in your gravy.