How to Make 'The Best Gravy in the World,' According to Sandra Lee

Sandra Lee is busy. The queen of semi-homemade has been all over our TVs lately, serving as the host and executive producer of two shows: Dinner Budget Showdown on ROKU, which premiered in May, and Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, which dropped on Netflix in August.

You can also catch her on QVC. She launched her Aunt Sandy Claus line earlier in the month and has a weekly one-hour show called "Sandra Lee Now" on the network (catch it every Sunday this month at 4 pm Eastern) and she's also an ambassador of QVC's Age of Possibility platform, which celebrates women over 50.

Related: Sandra Lee's Favorite Things to Buy at Costco & Sam's Club

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What's on Sandra Lee's Thanksgiving Menu?

Parade recently got the chance to chat with Lee about what she's been up to and her plans for the holiday season. She revealed she's only doing two Christmas trees this year and that gingerbread and copper are big themes for her (and for her QVC line). She loves that both gingerbread and copper can take you from Thanksgiving right into Christmas with just a few easy swap-outs. "I just replace the Thanksgiving turkeys with red berries," she says, for example. "It's so much work to put up Christmas to only enjoy it for four to six weeks," she says. We couldn't agree more!

After we chatted about all things decor, we had a few more pressing questions to ask, including getting some info on what she's serving on that beautifully decorated table this year. In a surprise to no one, she had everything figured out.

For Thanksgiving, there will be an herb-butter roasted turkey, cornbread stuffing (that she cooks inside the bird), steamed broccoli florets with butter-toasted sliced almonds and her 'very secret, very sacred fruitcake,' which she serves during the entire holiday season.

And then, in passing, she mentioned that she makes 'the best gravy in the world.' You can't drop phrases like that in front of us without a follow-up question (or three). Here's how Sandra Lee makes her famous gravy, so you can make it at your house too.

Related: 25 Steal-the-Show Christmas Dinner Ideas That Are *Chef's Kiss*

How to Make the Best Gravy in the World, According to Sandra Lee

To really celebrate like Lee, serve this rich gravy on mashed sour cream potatoes.

The base of Lee's gravy is a broth she makes with the giblets, the turkey bits that are in that packet that you find inside the turkey cavity. She covers them in water and simmers them for her broth. "I simmer them for a long time, maybe 10 hours," she says. Once the stock is done she puts it in the fridge until it's turkey time so the broth can continue to deepen in flavor.

Once the turkey is out of the oven, Lee makes a roux with equal parts oil and flour, cooking it down until it's nice and brown. She adds the drippings from the turkey, which includes some of the "delicious crumbly bits" from the stuffing. The addition of the stuffing bits means it won't be a totally smooth gravy, but that's just fine with Lee.

She adds her simmered down stock to the gravy and if she needs more liquid to thin the gravy, she'll whisk in some turkey stock. "I buy the turkey stock early because it's hard to find that," say says. "And then you're left with a chicken stock, which is not turkey stock." (She does say that you can use chicken stock in a pinch, though.)

She finishes the gravy off with some poultry seasoning and then lets it simmer down until it's the texture she likes. "I literally just reduce, reduce, reduce," she says.

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