Set aside a few hours the first time you create Bob’s, Chicken Gravy. It is much more pleasant not to be terribly rushed while figuring out things.
If the stuff becomes too thick from the blender, the blades are only whirling around beneath the chicken (you’ll hear it if it happens), add some water into the blender, which should get things going right again.
The”lumps” (bits of cartilage and bone ) are a turn-off for many newcomer gravy-eating ferrets. For their first gravy experience, make the gravy fairly thin, and attempt to grind everything up really smooth.
You might even want to strain a little bit of your very first batch to ensure it is ok for your ferret. As they get used to the gravy and since you make future batches, consider allowing more parts.
Bob’s bread trick (dip gravy in bread for the first time to make them taste it) didn’t work in my ferrets.
Now they all love it and consume it eagerly. To make them flavor it, I hold them and scooped a little bit of gravy on my finger, then scraped the sauce on their tongues/roof of the mouths.
A spoon would work too, but be really careful to not squirt down anything their fuzzy’s throat. It just took once or twice of this scruff-n-stuff treatment for 2 of my ferrets.
I only made them taste it after a day, so it wasn’t very stressful. It is a treat for three of my ferrets, who consume TF for Older Ferrets as their main diet gravy is Willard’s staple food nowadays, and he’s doing fabulous on it.
A hand crank meat grinder to initially grind up everything works pretty well. You still have to get the chicken in small hunks to get it to go through the grinder, but it seems more suitable for the initial grinding up than a blender.
You still need to get the chicken in tiny hunks to get it to go through the grinder, Use a heavy-duty blender as it may work better than mine, which is quite cheap and flimsy (read.. how to take care of your ferret).
After the chicken, skin, and fat go through the meat grinder, I did the cooking point, and it came out looking like hamburger.
Then I ran that through the blender till it was smooth enough for my ferrets to eat it. It is good to work them up to lumpy gravy, but I find it needs to be a very gradual thing.
Beware of adding too much water during the cooking phase. I think that the recipe states, at the beginning of cooking, to include enough water to make a thin gravy.
Bear in mind, there is a good deal of fat in there that will melt once it gets hot, then it will turn into liquid.
Poultry shears are an excellent way to cut the chicken to hunks. They handle the smaller bones easily. Bob suggests using a hammer to smash the big bones into little bits, but I haven’t tried it.
Also, you are going to be including a few tablespoons of oil and some nutricial, and these will thin the sauce. The first time that I made the sauce, it came out much too watery since I added too much water at the start.
I added a second cup and a half of kibble to thicken it up a little, and that appears to have functioned fine…
If you made it too thick, you could always add more water to thin it out, and this wouldn’t alter the significant elements of this recipe either.
If you are not utilizing a “real” meat grinder: Raw skin and fat don’t blend well in a blender.
They only gum up the blades and also become a disgusting mass to unwind/scrape off once you observe the blender isn’t grinding up things correctly.
I found it easier to not blend them all at first, and then cook them in large pieces along with the mixed meat/bone. After cooking, run everything through the blender again, and also the cooked skin appears to blend up just fine.
Chicken Gravy The Pressure Cooker Way
Tired of that grinding? Or the pink splatter in the blender? A pressure cooker may make preparing Bob’s Chicken Gravy a ton simpler.
You’re concerned about the nutritional quality?
I recommend pressure cooking because it shortens cooking times and isn’t as harmful to simple food ingredients.
Although there are many methods of liquifying poultry, I’m just going to tell you what I did.
First, make certain that you understand the pressure stove – if you are not used to them, browse the pressure cooker’s guide, since it’s possible to get severely harm by these items if you are not careful.
You’ll start by cutting off the large chunks of fat and meat (breast-skin, neck fat) of the bird.
Cook the boneless pieces separately with the giblets in a pot of water (about a cup usually works fine for me).
read.. North Coast Duck Soup Recipe
You are left with all the bony pieces. I prefer to use a cleaver to place a few cracks at the greatest bones, to make them simpler for your blender.
Reduce the heat to the minimum needed to maintain the fat rocking and begin timing.
One and Half an hour is a lot for this. I guess that if you leave the entire chicken in, you would need to lengthen the time.
Once the period is up, cool that the pressure cooker under running water flow in the faucet until it depressurizes, and voila!
Don’t take off the lid from the pressure cooker till it’s depressurized!
If you want to include kibble, throw it all in with the soup, so it gets soft and absorbs liquid until you blend it.
Mix all the stuff from the pressure cooker together, then add the cooked boneless pieces. Stir it, maybe two cups at a time.
When you mix, close the lid tight. Add enough broth to just cover the bones in the blender’s pitcher if the mixture gets too thick.
Put three or four eggshells into the blender, throw a little chicken on top of it and blend that part really really well, so that everything becomes smashed into tiny little pieces.
When it feels like it’s mixed, dump it in the huge stockpot, then repeat until it gets done. Let it cool so the vitamins from the Nutrical don’t get destroyed by excess heat.
Make sure you are using the right storage containers. I like the little Zip-Loc containers — the tiniest ones are perfect for me. I’ve heard that ice cube trays also work great.
