One of the common benefits of “conventional” foods is the convenience factor in preparation. Given the wonders of modern chemistry one can, with very little effort, put together something for a quick & easy meal. However, as the Organic Movement gains momentum, convenience type products are becoming more readily available. 
But how good are they for say an easy gravy for a turkey dinner? To find out end we purchased a packet of Simply Organic Roasted Turkey Gravy Mix and checked it out.
Well, we confirmed that this was in fact an organic product by noting the USDA Organic Label in the front of the package and the Organic Certification by QAI on the back. In reading the ingredients, we see that they are mostly organic (including organic turkey and chicken flavors). In the nutrition section we notice that the package is rated for 4 servings so you probably want to buy more than one package if you plan on serving more than two people (they always understate what a serving size is). You can obtain the specific ingredient and nutritional info by clicking on the Organic Turkey Gravy Mix link from their gravy page given above and here (there’s no direct link that we can see).
OK, so we open the package and the powder inside has this light tan color..not really a dark gravy-like color..huh.. In the directions, they mention mixing the contents with one cup of warm water. So we measured out a cup of spring water and heated it in a saucepan. When warm, the contents of the package were added. As expected, it was thin and contained clumps of power which we had to crush against the side of the saucepan to get dissolved. Once dissolved the instructions say to stir over a medium heat for 5-10 minutes…ok..
When we did this we were happy to notice that the gravy started to thicken. Also, the light tan color started to darken. This was nice since the light tan watery stuff we started out with wasn’t too appetizing. We continued this process until the entire 10 minutes were up. We noticed is that the turkey gravy seemed to max out on thickness and color after about 7 minutes. And actually, after this time it had thickened enough to hold a steam bubble that had formed on the bottom of the pan..So the gravy ended up with a nice thickness (about that of an instant cake mix as a point of reference, the final color was a dark tan).
So it looks pretty good which is a valid consideration but what about the taste? Well, the taste was also pretty good… Not knock you down fantastic but a solid pretty good (as good as my brother’s who doesn’t read this blog). It didn’t have as much depth.. flavor/body whatever you want to call it for our 100% liking. There was also this undertone of a very flat “flavor” note running through all of it. So stepping back, we figured that we had one of two things on our hands. One, we had a pretty good gravy or two, we had a more than pretty good base to work on improving. We chose to view this gravy as the latter so we could experiment a bit.
Well, there were two great things about this gravy that we didn’t want to mess with. First, it is organic and second it’s cholesterol-free. So we kept our additions simple and organic. First, we added ground organic pepper (as suggested on the package). Then we went a step further and added some some olive oil to give it some body without adding any cholesterol. And finally, we tossed in a little thyme. Not too much on any of these and we added less than we thought we should and slowly taste-tested our way up to the perfect levels. The result was a very respectable gravy..that’s organic..and easy… We were starting to like this stuff.
But how does it taste on food? Well for some reason we thought that making a quick plate of scrambled eggs might be good…So we did this and smothered them with gravy.. Man was this good. And the eggs we prep’d were egg whites so we had an easy to prepare high protein and cholesterol free meal (note: we also cooked some portabella mushrooms and jalapenos with the eggs but that’s just us).
So in summary, we recommend this product as a buy. And I would serve it for the Thanksgiving Feast even if you make your own scratch gravy which admittedly does taste better (so long as you’re not my brother). The reason being is that it gives those who are watching their cholesterol a guilt-free option to go nuts with the gravy. Next, we thought the gravy became nice & thick and developed a good color and flavor. However, our preference was to enhance this with some pepper, olive oil and thyme. But dress this up to your own tastes. Actually, since this is so inexpensive ($0.98 on the website) we recommend that you have a “dry run” to play with it to so you can optimize the recipe to your liking prior to the Thanksgiving Meal. In either case being organic no longer means eating only twigs and berries. There’s a lot out there..go enjoy it, and live naturally.
