The master of mushroom gravy.

Yeah, that's me. I can totally school all of you in whipping up a quick mushroom gravy. It can even be made vegan extremely easily. Wanna learn how?

There isn't a whole lot to this recipe, but it's totally fun to make and absolutely amazing on mashed potatoes. Or if you want to pour it on chicken and broccoli and serve over pasta. Or if you want to serve it over rice. There are tons of ways I have eaten this since I learned how to make it, about two months ago.

Firstly, I am going to tell you, the initial time I decided to make my own mushroom gravy, it was on a whim while I was at work. I googled "mushroom gravy" because I hadn't had the foggiest of ideas how to make a gravy. I found a recipe and attempted to memorize the ingredients I would need to pick up on my way home, and closed the browser. I probably should have written down a list. I also probably should have assumed that I didn't have corn starch in my cabinet, because when I got home and saw that I had nothing to thicken my gravy with, I was completely bummed.

I went online and googled more recipes, trying to find alternatives to the corn starch. I found that adding flour does the trick. But the mushroom gravy recipes I found that had flour in them had totally different ingredients than the one I found with the corn starch.

At this point I was more than annoyed and decided to step into the kitchen and whip something up without following a recipe. And for someone who had never made gravy before, I found that I was actually really good at it. Since that day, I have made it at least once a week, and inhaled all of it before it even got cold.

Secondly, I am going to tell you what I do when I make it. I usually am preparing it for my boyfriend and I, so if you're making this for yourself and three people, you should double the recipe. And so on. And so fourth. If you're not a huge fan of garlic, use less. If you love garlic, use more. There isn't a whole lot you can do to fuck this recipe up, just pay attention to the explanations I give for each ingredient and why I do things certain ways. Trust me, it will be a big help, because I really don't have set of instructions, or measurements, or times for my recipes. I judge the readiness of my food by tastes, smells and appearance.

Okay, here we go.

First, you're going to need a skillet. And some oil. Put the skillet on the burner and put it on a pretty low temperature. You're going to add oil to the pan so there's a little more than enough to coat the bottom of the pan. You know the oil is hot enough when you flick water into the pan and the droplets dance. My burners have have a low setting, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and high. I usually start off between two and three. I chop an onion finely because I hate chunks of onion, but like the flavor. Feel free to chop to your liking. Once the onions start to turn a bit mushy, you're going to want to throw in a couple of cloves of chopped garlic. I love garlic, and I usually add two or three, and feel like I could still use more garlic. At this point I turn my burner up to a whopping three, and add a dash more oil. You're going to want to keep an eye on this, stirring and such frequently. You want to have the garlic brownish for a roasted flavor. Once this happens, add your mushrooms. I usually add about ten baby bellas, sliced.

You're going to add a dash of water and cover, stirring occasionally. Once the mushrooms aren't so raw, I add four tablespoons of butter. If you're making this vegan, clearly you will use a vegan butter. Once the butter is melted and stirred into the mushroom onion garlic mess, you will add the flour. The rule of thumb for this recipe is to add equal parts butter and flour. So if you're making more gravy, you're going to add more butter and more flour. Duh.

You're going to mix this all up, and it's going to look totally gross. Next, you're going to add in a vegetable bouillon cube. The bouillon cube has a lot of salt in it, so you might want to use half if you are only making it for two. Next, add in a couple tablespoons of water, and stir until it looks just as gross as before, only bouillon colored. Turn the heat down a touch and cover, stirring occasionally to be sure that nothing is burning to the pan. After about 7 minutes, you're going to think you totally screwed up and you are going to contemplate throwing out your mess, cleaning all the dishes, and never think about mushroom gravy again. Don't do this. Your gravy is fine.

You're going to take red wine and drizzle it along the outer rim of the pan all fancy like. Like you know what you're doing in the kitchen. You're going to stir a bit, scraping all the junk off the sides of the pan and mixing it with all the flour and butter and mushroom stuff. That was fun, wasn't it? Cover for another minute and then repeat. Now add water slowly, mixing it with the mixture. You're going to want to keep adding water and stirring until the gravy is a bit thicker than you really want it to be. Turn your burner down a bit more and cover again. It's starting to look like gravy now, but you probably still think you made some disastrous concoction. Add another drizzle of red wine, scraping and stirring again. Add water and stir again, bringing the burner down to a barely keeping your food warm temperature. You are going to want to add water until the gravy is a little thinner than you actually want it. Cover and let simmer for another five minutes or so.

Voila! You just learned how to make mushroom gravy. Feel free to thank me all you want.

And for this weeks freebie? Consider this lesson it, because I couldn't find anything good on the internet this week. Maybe Freebie Fridays will have to share the day with Foodie Fridays? Who knows. We'll see next week.