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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
5 min
19/12/2025
Christmas is a time to celebrate with loved ones, not slave in the kitchen all day. Which is why the festive feast should include shortcut hacks, meal prep, and smart cooking. And if there’s one hack that home cooks should definitely try, it’s the one for shortcut gravy. It’s gravy made by using caramelised onions or stock cubes – no drippings required.
Come winter, and long hours doing anything other than cosying up in bed sounds like an arduous task. But it’s also the season of joy because Christmas is around the corner. Which means festive dinners, hosting friends and family, and having a jolly good time. But what happens when activities line up faster than you can execute them? Well, option 1 is to panic. Option 2 is relying on shortcut hacks that ease the chaos and let you enjoy the festivities. Like this shortcut gravy hack that requires no drippings but still yields wonderfully rich, thick and delicious gravy. Let’s find out more.
More often than not, gravy – the rich sauce coating your roasts and veggies – is made from drippings. Gravy drippings are the concentrated juices, fat, and browned bits left in the roasting pan after cooking meats like turkey, chicken, or beef. They form the rich base for homemade gravy. They are collected, the fat often separated, and then combined with a thickener (like flour or cornstarch) and liquid (broth, water, milk) to create a sauce that’s poured over your mains and even sides, like mashed potatoes.
However, this can also be a long-drawn process because it can only be made once the meat has been roasted. Gravy drippings also run the risk of being either too thick, lumpy, or greasy, often due to incorrect flour/liquid ratios or overheating. And of course, at times, you may not have enough drippings to make sauce for a crowd. In such cases, the resulting gravy might have a diluted flavour. Now, while a shortcut gravy can’t solve all problems, it can certainly help with cooking time and quantity. But before understanding how shortcut gravy works, it’s important to know about stock cubes.
Stock cubes today are an indispensable ingredient for making gravies and are used across households. But what exactly are they? Well, it’s as the name suggests – cubes of stock (vegetable or meat). Also called bouillon cubes, they are small, concentrated blocks of dehydrated meat or vegetable stock, salt, and seasonings. They are dissolved in hot water to add instant savoury flavour to dishes like soups, stews, and sauces when dissolved in hot water.
They are a convenient, shelf-stable alternative to making stock from scratch, providing a quick flavour base for cooking. Salt remains the primary seasoning, but flavour enhancers like MSG might also be used. It’s important to remember that stock cubes can’t match the complex flavour of homemade stock, but can be an excellent option for seasoning (they also include garlic, onion, spices) or quick dishes. Thus, use them when you’re short on time and have a big menu to prepare, but not necessarily for all meals, every day.
There are two main methods to make gravy without drippings – both of which involve stock cubes.
This recipe combines the deep flavour of stock cubes with the sweetness of quickly softened onions. You will need a large, thinly sliced onion, olive oil and butter, flour, boiling water, meat or vegetarian stock cubes, salt, and pepper. Here are the steps:
For an even faster gravy, you can use this simple method with butter, flour, chicken and beef stock cubes, and boiling water. Optional onion powder or dark soy sauce can add extra flavour and colour.
Easy cooking may have taken on a bad rep for being low on flavour, but hacks like these prove that nothing could be farther from the truth. After all, a festive meal isn’t just made by the dishes on the table. It’s also made by the people who enjoy them, together. Because nothing tastes sweeter than a shared morsel!
