Sauces & dressings · Gravies

Pan gravy

Name: Pan gravy
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 17 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 3 tbsp butter; 1/3 cup all-purpose flour; 3 cups chicken broth, warm; 1/2 tsp dried thyme; 1/2 tsp black pepper; a pinch salt

Butter, flour and stock — the three-ingredient sauce that decides whether a roast dinner works. Cook the flour properly before the liquid goes in and it will never taste of raw paste.

Time: 17 min (5 prep + 12 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 64 kcal
Protein: 1 g

Ingredients

3 tbsp butter45 g
1/3 cup all-purpose flour40 g
3 cups chicken broth, warm700 g
1/2 tsp dried thyme1 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g
a pinch salt1 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Melt the butter in the roasting tin or a saucepan, scraping up any browned bits — those are most of the flavour.
Whisk in the flour and cook it 2–3 minutes, until it smells nutty and turns the colour of sand. This is the step people skip and then wonder why the gravy tastes floury.
Add the warm broth a splash at a time, whisking each addition smooth before the next. Adding it all at once is how lumps happen.
Simmer 5–8 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon, then season. Salt last — stock reduces, and so does its salt.

It went lumpy anyway.

Pour it through a sieve and say nothing. A stick blender also works and nobody will ever know.

Why this score

solidly filling

Low energy density — a lot of food for the calories.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

8% of kcal

87% water

3 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 513 kcal goes into the pot, 788 g of ingredients comes out as ~700 g of food → 73 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 73
Protein: (8%); 1 g
Fat: (66%); 6 g
Carbohydrates: (26%); 5 g
of which sugar: <1 g
Fiber: <1 g
Sodium: 468 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.