Gravy is real comfort food, whether it’s served over a veggie roast dinner, or with a plate of mashed potatoes. But real gravy is usually simply the cheap by-product of cooked meat, often with added palm oil and other dodgy ingredients. There are not many good vegan gravy brands on the market (we found two, below), so it’s time to learn to make your own. It’s pretty easy once you know how.
Keep stocks and gravy away from pets, due to unsafe ingredients like salt, onion, garlic and mushrooms. Read more on keeping people & pets safe in the kitchen.
This vegan gravy (School Night Vegan) is a pretty traditional recipe that fries onions in vegan butter, then adds flour and stock. The add in your flour and stock. The secret ingredient is umami soy sauce, to make it super-yummy.
This easy 15-minute vegan gravy recipe (Broke Bank Vegan) is a simple recipe that uses a few store-cupboard ingredients (no mushrooms) to serve with mash potato and veggie roast dinners. The recipe uses vegan butter (all Flora is now free from palm oil), flour and good veggie stock, along with onion, garlic, tamari and miso paste (avoid unpasteurised versions for pregnancy/nursing).
where to buy good vegan gravy
Steenbergs makes good instant gravy mix (vegan, organic and free from palm oil) sold in a glass jar. It’s made with onion, garlic and herb powders, turmeric/cumin, organic sugar and carob, blended at the ‘eco-spice’ factory’ in North Yorkshire. Just add 50ml of boiling water to 7 teaspoons of gravy mix, then add 450ml of boiling water (stirring), leave to stand for 2 minutes and stir again.
Marigold Organic Gravy Powder is free from palm oil, made with carrot/onion juice, spices, white mushrooms, chicory and yeast extract. You can find it in health stores and some supermarkets.
The best-selling gravy brands are marketed as ‘traditional and natural’. But in fact, most are just a cheap mix of ingredients and nothing to write home about: palm fat etc. Most are also owned by big multi-national brands (not ‘nostalgic’ at all and nothing to do with the local organic food movement).