A Thermos Is Your Best Friend When It Comes To Keeping Gravy Warm

When planning any big holiday dinner, timing is always the trickiest element to account for. You're making a dozen different dishes, all of which have different cook and prep times; you have a limited amount of real estate in the oven and on the stovetop, and the various dishes all need to cook at their own temperatures. With so much to juggle, it's not difficult for one or two things to end up south of room temperature by the time everyone is seated and ready to eat — especially various delicious sides and condiments that probably aren't taking up much of your focus. Hence, the bummer of trying to pour thick, cold gravy over your plate.

Admittedly, we as a society have not perfected our means of dealing with gravy. It's typically served in a gravy boat, which may be easy to hold and to pour from, but the open top allows heat to escape quickly. The other option is to leave it on the stove, hogging a burner that you need for something else. 

There's one useful object you may have on hand, and it's more likely to be found with your camping supplies than with your china: a trusty thermos. Thermoses are made to keep liquids hot for hours at a time by storing them in an insulated, vacuum-sealed chamber, making it the perfect vessel for steaming hot gravy, be it a classic turkey gravy or something a little more unexpected.

A common gravy-management technique is to leave it in a saucepan on the stove over low heat until the very moment of serving, which might work but isn't without drawbacks. First of all, leaving anything on heat while your attention is divided is a little risky; in the case of gravy, you could end up reducing it more than desired, or burning it at the bottom and edges of the saucepan. No one wants a bitter, burnt-tasting gravy.

Second, even if the gravy comes out great, keeping a saucepan on an active burner takes up stove space that you might need to heat and reheat other dishes. Thermoses are made to keep food at safe temperatures (above 140 degrees Fahrenheit) for six or more hours at a time, particularly on outdoor excursions where you may not have access to any sort of heat source. The exact amount of heat retention over time will depend on the specific thermos and how full it is (more air inside the vacuum will allow it to cool more quickly, so try to pick a vessel you can fill up all the way), but it'll keep the gravy much hotter than if you left it in a saucepan on the counter, or immediately transferred it to a serving dish.

To make sure your gravy is at the optimal temperature for serving, you'll of course want to make sure it's gotten hot enough in the first place. It should boil at about 165 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point you can turn off the heat and transfer it to your thermos. Even if it then lies in wait for two or three hours, it should retain most of its heat. If you want to be really safe, you can even preheat the thermos itself to help it retain heat longer — do this by pouring boiling water into the vessel to raise its temperature while the gravy itself is still cooking. Then dump the boiling water out just before transferring the gravy from stovetop to thermos.

If you're not fancy, you can bring the thermos directly to the table and reseal it in between pours, so it stays warm throughout the meal; if a picture perfect table is important to you, just pour it into your gravy boat right before serving. Your guests won't have any reason to think it didn't just come directly from the stovetop — even if it's been hanging out on your counter all morning.