How To Properly Store And Reheat Gravy

Thanksgiving leftovers are a good sign: It means that everybody at the table ate their fill. Gravy can be challenging to keep fresh, though, and your goal is to avoid making mistakes that cause disappointing gravy when you're polishing off your leftovers the next day. To get some help with this, Chowhound spoke exclusively with recipe developer and lifestyle expert Peter Som, who's written quite a bit about Thanksgiving preparation. According to him, leftover gravy should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge within two hours of cooking. If properly sealed, you can expect it to last about four days in the fridge.

On the subject of reheating, Som offers some advice for retaining the gravy's consistency. "The best method is to reheat [it] in a saucepan over low heat-stirring often — and adding a splash of broth or water if the mixture is too thick," he says. "Do not boil the gravy as it'll most likely split." If the gravy splits, that means the emulsion has broken and the ingredients have separated from each other due to being heated too much, too quickly. To fix it, you'll need to whisk the gravy back into a single, uniformly thick mixture with the help of a simple addition.

Peter Som's suggestion of adding broth to water down thick gravy works because of how gravy is made: by taking meat stock or broth and thickening it with flour and butter (and then seasoning it) until it changes from "liquid" to "sauce." Flour is usually the culprit for overly thick or clumped gravy, while fats like butter can often be responsible for gravy separating. In either case, the fix is to rebalance the ingredients by adding more stock and broth and then mixing it in with a whisk, like OXO's Good Grips balloon whisk, to recreate that emulsion. Stock and broth are slightly different, but both work well as a gravy base.

You shouldn't try to reheat the gravy if its texture seems overly slimy or if it's taken on a sour smell. Those are both signs that your gravy has spoiled, alongside the more obvious tells like mold or a noticeable change in color. Beyond that, keep track of how long you've stored it and how long it lasts (you can store gravy in the freezer for six months), because sometimes the smell test doesn't pick up dangerous types of bacteria. If it's been recently and properly stored, and is only slightly separated, then it should still be alright and you can begin the process of whisking it until it's back to its perfect texture.