I love turkey. I love roast potatoes. I love stuffing. Hey, I even love brussel sprouts. But do you know what I love the most? Everything covered in gravy. I prefer my Christmas lunch to be swimming in the stuff. Luckily a few others in my family are more drizzlers. This is velvety smooth sweet onion gravy with a tang of balsamic. Freezes well too. Not that there’ll be any left in our house. Here’s a little video if you prefer to watch than read:

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil
20g unsalted butter
3 onions, sliced
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
8 teaspoons gravy granules
1 tablespoon cranberry sauce

Take 3 onions, peel them and then chop them finely. It does look like quite a lot of onions, but I promise this is going to cook down a lot. Pop 2 tablespoons of rapeseed oil into a frying pan with 20g of unsalted butter. Melt on a low heat then add the chopped onions. Get them nicely coated in the butter and the oil, and then leave them on a gentle heat for about 15 minutes to soften and start to caramelise. After 15 minutes, pop in 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Next, add in 1 tablespoon of soft brown sugar and then, once they are all covered, leave for another 15 minutes of really gentle frying in the pan. When they’re done, you’ll see that sort of classic caramelised look, slightly crisp edges, really brown, sweet-looking onions.

Add 700ml of boiling water with 40g of gravy granules dissolved in it, to the pan. Turn up the heat a tiny bit so that your gravy’s simmering and bubbling away. Check for any lumps, whisk if you see any and when you’re happy that they’ve all gone, add in a tablespoon of cranberry sauce. Give that a good stir and make sure it’s all distributed really well within the gravy and then just keep that warm until you’re ready to use it.