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This guide was put together by request. It describes the way I make Bob's Chicken Gravy. This is not the only way to do it! I make no claims that this is the best way... It's what I've found works best for me and describes the technique I've developed after making this stuff approximately every three weeks for a year. Your mileage may vary!

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Items used in this guide:

• Hand crank meat grinder ($30 new at now-defunct kitchen outlet store) (Where to find a good meat grinder)
• Small chef's knife
• Small cleaver
• Poultry shears
• Two fairly large stock pots
• One small saucepan
• Plastic cutting board dedicated to only gravy making because the hacking stage causes it to get deep cuts that are hard to clean.
• A couple of spatulas and stirrers
• Wire whisk
• Whatever storage things you're going to use to store the gravy
• Gravy ingredients (also listed below)

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We begin with our innocent victim. In this case, we have a fairly large roasting chicken on a cutting board. To the left, we have the chicken's neck and gibblets on a plate. In the middle, we have the first of the tools: poultry shears, cleaver, small chef's knife. Missing from the picture is the extra chicken fat that I left in the refrigerator. Imagine it nestled in there with the gibblets. Rinse the chicken inside and out under tap water.

The first step is to cut the chicken up into parts. If you haven't done it before and don't want to plunge ahead and start cutting, you can check out the Delaware Cooperative Extension's guide to How To Cut Up a Chicken. At this stage, you're just getting the chicken into pieces. It's handy to cut the breast meat into strips an inch or two wide at this point. Use the poultry shears to cut the skin and fat into fairly small pieces and to cut through the ribs and smaller bones.

Next, it's time to use the cleaver to break the bones so that they will go through the meat grinder fairly easily. It's not necessary to cut the chicken into hundreds of small cubes; really, all you need to do is break the bones up a bit and crack the joints so that everything will go into the grinder. If these are left too large, the grinder won't be able to drag them through. Also, it's good to generally hack the pieces into hunks that will go through the grinder. Once you've actually done this once, you'll see it's fairly easy to tell the right sizes for your meat grinder. Here are a wing and a leg after being hacked at a bit to get them into the right state. Notice that the wing hasn't been put into the same massacred state as the leg. Most wings are small enough that you really just need to put some cuts through the joints and crack the long bones a bit. Fed into the grinder wing tip first, they usually go through very nicely. Legs are much bigger, meatier, and need to be chopped up quite a bit before they will go through. I find that legs are probably the hardest part of the chicken to work with.

And here is the whole bird, hacked up and neatly sorted into piles, ready for the meat grinder. The plate on the left has the boneless parts: breast meat cut into strips, fat and skin, and innards. The plate on the right has all of the bony parts.

Time for the meat grinder! I find it fastest to grind up the boneless parts first, so that the bone chips aren't backed up in the grinder, blocking the way. But don't add all of the skin and fat at once! The skin and fat can gum up the works pretty badly. Feed it in a bit at a time, mixed with other things. If it still glops on you, it works fine to not grind it at all - simply save it until you are at the cooking stage and then throw it in. After it's cooked, it will do fine in the blender.

No matter how hard I try, I can never get quite everything to go through the meat grinder. There is always a bit left in there, and I don't want to waste it. I dismantle the grinder and put the left-over bits into a small saucepan. It probably amounts to about a half cup of small meat scraps, bits of bone, and white rounded pieces of cartilage.

Take the small saucepan with the left-over bits, add water, and boil these pieces. Start with high heat, but once it comes to a boil, turn it down to low or else it will foam all over the place... Actually, it still might foam. Keep an eye on it and stir it occasionally, and if it foams persistently, take it off the heat for a little while. I do all of this at the same time as I'm cooking the rest of the ground chicken. Cook the ground chicken in a big stock pot. I usually add a cup or two of water to thin it out a little bit. I cook it over high heat and stir it pretty constantly until it's done.

Take the cooked contents of the small saucepan (water and bone bits) and place them in the blender. Blend them in order to break the bones up into small pieces. Use a strainer to check on the size, and if you're happy with them, throw them in with the ground chicken, or just put them into your second stock pot (empty at this point but soon holding your nearly-done gravy). Save the water when you strain them! This broth is wonderful to use for thinning the gravy during the blending stage. You can see the blended bone bits in the strainer. The cooked chicken is in the large stock pot - notice the liquid fat.

Now it's time to get serious with the blender. Put a small amount - less than a cup - of the ground chicken in the blender. This is a good time to add the eggshells. If you're going to add kibble, this is a good time to throw it in as well. Be warned, though: the kibble is a potent thickener, and the more you use, the more broth or water you'll have to keep adding to the blender in order to keep things moving along. I blend this first bit very very fine in order to get the eggshells into the mix. When you're satisfied, dump this out into another large stock pot.

Repeat! Now that you're done with the eggshells and kibble, it's safe to add larger amounts of chicken to the blender. I usually do a little over a cup at a time. Mix the chicken up before getting a scoopful for the blender - this will mix the fat and make it blend more easily. Use a little of the broth or some water when the mixture is too thick for the blender. Keep going with the ground chicken until it's gone. You can make it as lumpy as you want - I find it's easier with older ferrets to start with a fairly smooth gravy and work them up to the lumps gradually.

Nearly done. I like to let it cool down to lukewarm before finishing it up. My reasoning is that if the Nutrical is added to replace nutrients lost during cooking, it might defeat that purpose to add it while the mixture is still really hot. Add in the remaining ingredients: 2 Tablespoons Metamucil (or fine bran or whole oats), 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil, 1 Tablespoon Ferretone, 2-4 Tablespoons Honey, 1 Tube of Nutrical. Mix those in very thoroughly and you're done. A wire whisk is great for this and helps prevent lumps of unmixed Metamucil or Nutrical. Now you just have to get it into containers of your choice for storage. Lots of people use ice cube trays or those Zip-Loc containers. Freeze most of it and take out what you need a little bit at a time.

An obliging canine friend is a great help in clean up!