Gravylicious!

Making yummy gravy for the ferrets, in a step by step photo essay. Thanks to TRIFL.org for the idea. Here's the full listing of ingredients/measurements and proper instructions: http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind9812&L=ferret-search&P=R42036.

Getting ready with all your ingredients. I forgot the low salt chicken broth so just pretend you see it.

Set up your grinder on a surface so you have space to work, and be sure to have a large plate to catch the grindings.

Start with a piece of chicken. I have leg quarters this time. Obviously, this won't fit into the grinder as is. So lets get to cutting up some chicken, eh?

Start whacking it up into smaller pieces. We're not serving lunch here, so the cuts do not need to be perfect, just sized to fit into the grinder. It's okay to be messy.

One piece becomes five much more managable pieces.

Gentlemen, start your grinding. Just start feeding the small chunks into the grinder. It will make ugly wet crushing noises. Turn up the stereo if this bothers you. Remember to keep that plate in place or you're going to have a mess.

That one leg quarter makes about that much ground chicken. Just a gauge incase you need to know how many leg quarters to grind.

As the plate becomes full, dump the ground chicken into a large stew pot.

As you're grinding, add the extra fat trimmings you've saved. I do this inbetween the meat so it doesn't all gank up and clog the grinder. If you have a nice piece of bone and meat to push it through, it seems to work well for me.

Okay, so you've ground up the entire chicken or bag of parts. Now you can start dismantling the grinder. Every time I make gravy, I get this nasty stringy stuff stuck inside the chopper part of my grinder. I do not save it, I just throw it away. I think it's mostly made up of tendons. Whatever its made of, its nasty looking. Fear not, just toss it.

Here is that entire bag of leg quarters, ground up.

Now, add in your other ingredients. For me that consisted of the eggs and shells, Nupro Supplement, Honey, Olive Oil and Metamucil. The measurements for these ingredients are up in the link on the top of the page. I substituted the Nupro for the ferretone or ferretvite, since I personally don't use those products.

I add the Folic Acid and Calcium tablets to the low salt chicken stock bullion cube, and let them all melt so there isn't any chunks of pills in the gravy.

While the bullion cubes and tablets are dissolving, I stir up the rest of the ingredients.

The calcium pill takes a long time to dissolve. So be patient if you use this in your recipe.

The pills are dissolved, and in total (along with the bullion/pill water), I added about 20 ounces of water.

I let my ferrets "lick the spoon" so to speak, and give them a little of the uncooked gravy. If you are unsure of the freshness of your chicken, I wouldn't suggest this. But here is Fred giving his patented gravy smile.

I only parboil my gravy, which means barely cook it, basically. I also do not add kibble, as my ferrets like it without, and also this batch is being donated to the raffle table at Rocky's Ferret Shelter's Oktoberfest. I want whoever wins it to be able to add the kibble of their choice.

While its cooking, get your blender set up. Make sure that all the connections are tight, as this stuff has the ability to make a huge mess if your blender isn't set up right.

Okay, its done cooking. Can you see how it's turned from pink to sorta brownish pink? To me, that says it's done. Feel free to cook yours more if that makes you happier.

So, now take the pot of mush over to the blender. Put some in there, but wait! Not too much or it will bog down the blender and eventually burn it out. I put about 3 ladles full into the blender at once. No more.

Turn on the blender. I start at the lower speed settings and work my way up. Otherwise, again, you'll have a better chance of killing the blender, which is bad, and smells like burning rubber. Yuck.

That's what the blended gravy looks like. I like mine a little lumpy, but not chunky.

I pour the blended mixture into this tray. Its a cool rectangular tray with a lid. Its much easier than trying to work with those damn ziplock bags. What I do is refrigerate the full tray of gravy, and then score it into squares with a knife, and then freeze it. Once the gravy has frozen, it is very easy to simply remove the scored squares and then put them into individual bags, if that is what you prefer. Otherwise, you just get a huge gloppy mess of soggy ziplock bags.

Finished product, cooling. I let it cool and then refrigerate it, then score it, then freeze it.

Okay, who's coming over to help me clean up? This is a messy procedure, so be prepared for a long cleanup.

That's it! I hope this helps you in your chicken gravy adventures. I don't always make Chicken gravy, sometimes I make beef, turkey, venison, rabbit, fish...whatever meat I can find that is fresh and on sale. I also have a different recipe for lactating jills and young kits, which basically just substitutes the bullion for goats milk or a can of Esbilac Puppy Milk Replacer liquid. Since initially making this page last year, I've finally discovered that cheap blenders are indeed, cheap. We got a lovely Oster blender for a wedding gift, and its much nicer and heavy duty, and has outlasted any of these cheap models, and performs better, too. So please, if you're thinking of making gravy on a weekly basis, consider a good blender.

Update 9/04

Here are some new photos, showing a mixture of rabbit and turkey gravy that I made for my lactating jills and baby ferrets who were starting to be weaned.

Ingredients left to right, Nupro supplement, powdered goat's milk, wheat germ oil, ferret drops (iron/vitamin supplement), heavy cream, pre-ground turkey, eggs, dressed rabbit (no innards).

My new best friend in gravy making, a Maverick electric grinder. This thing is wonderful and cuts my grinding time down by 3/4 if not more. It is strong enough to grind heavy chicken and turkey bones, but not beef.

The rabbit carcass. Yes I do realize that it is not very attractive, but if you're going to make this, you're going to have to deal with it, so I figured I might as well show it.

Same rabbit carcass, now cut into small pieces that will fit into the grinder. Please notice that the bones are still included, as they have vitamins and nutrition that your ferret needs.

Begin grinding the rabbit. Go slowly and let each piece completely go through the grinder before you add more, or you can burn the motor out.

One rabbit carcass yields about that much meat. You can grind more or less depending on the amount of ferrets who will be attending the dinner party.

Okay, in this picture you will see all the ingredients in the pot, cooking. The ingredients are listed above, and I have also added water to reconstitute the goats milk powder, some extra beef fat that I'd saved as the rabbit is very lean, the eggs and shells, the supplements, some metamucil powder (unflavored), honey, wheat germ and olive oil, the tube of pre-ground turkey, and some chicken liquid/fat that I had saved when I cooked a chicken for the humans. I cooked it till it was slightly parboiled, and since this was going to be used to wean the babies, I ran it through the blender since they didn't have enough teeth to eat it if it were too chunky. You can always skip the blending process and change your grinder blades to adjust the texture of your gravy. My ferrets in general prefer their gravy extra chunky.

Happy Grinding! Feel free to email me with any questions/comments at kim at pooflinger dot com.