Gluten Free Vegetarian Gravy

Gluten free vegetarian gravy is a must for any vegetarian roast dinner. This version will ensure that your Sunday lunches or veggie bangers and mash never have to go without the perfect accompaniment!

If you come here often, you’ll know that I find vegetarian Sunday roasts to be one of the hardest parts of being gluten free! 

Sure, they are veg-heavy and packed with trimmings. But it’s hard to find the right protein or centrepiece to work alongside potatoes and root veg. And even more importantly the finished result is just too dry to enjoy without a flavourful gravy.

So if you’ve been using gravy granules to scratch that itch, then read on. This recipe may not change your life, but it’ll definitely elevate your Sunday afternoons!

How to make gluten free onion gravy

There are effectively four steps to making this gluten free vegetarian gravy, and we’ll go through them now before getting into the details of the ingredients themselves.

But essentially we’re making something very similar to a traditional French Sauce Espagnole – one of the ‘mother sauces’ of French cuisine. It sounds fancy, but it’s a simple process: cook the onions, add gluten free flour to create a paste, and then loosen that paste into a luxurious gravy by adding liquid until you get your desired consistency.

This is similar to a gluten free bechamel sauce that we use for lasagna, and is also the base for my cauliflower cheese recipe. And that’s another dish you should be considering if you’re preparing your own vegetarian Sunday roast this weekend!

Let’s take a look at each of those steps in detail now, and you’ll see just how easy it is to make this game-changing sauce!

Slowly cook or caramelise the onions

Caramelised onions can be a nightmare in the kitchen, and I find that when making a vegetarian Sunday roast is already a more involved process than cooking a meaty one. Ultimately you have to put more effort into creating flavour.

So truth be told, I tend not to cook these onions down to caramelised level when making this gravy. You don’t have to – just make sure they’re cooked down well and have started to brown. 

Go the whole hog and caramelise them if you like. But whatever you do, make sure you cook these onions until they’re properly soft. You definitely do not want any bite or crunch left when you come to eat this – but you also don’t need to spend an hour cooking them.

Add more oil and cornflour to create a roux

Once the onions are soft you can start properly making the gravy.

I like to add a knob of butter to my onions now and melt that down before adding the cornflour. This gives us an equal ratio of flour to fat.

As always with my recipes involving roux bases, I use cornflour to thicken the sauce. I find gluten free all-purpose flour creates a grainy end-result. And if the flour has added xanthan gum, it has a viscous quality that I find slightly off-putting when pouring over mashed potatoes!

Cornflour is easy to find in the supermarket, and creates a perfectly smooth end result for this gluten free onion gravy!

Add herbs and flavour to the base

This is where it gets interesting.

At this stage, we want to infuse the mixture with aromatic flavours that complement the rest of our meal.

The recipe below will specify dried  sage, thyme or rosemary for this step, as well as some sugar (which you can skip if you’ve fully caramelised your onions). But bear in mind that you can mix up the flavour profile here depending on what you’re planning on serving alongside this gravy.

This is also the part where I do call for an ingredient most people might not have to hand.

If you’ve come to this blog before, you’ll know I love dried mushroom powder. I use it frequently in dishes like this to add that umami flavour. 

I love it here in this recipe and I think it adds a lot of value. But if you don’t have it around you have a few options. 

Firstly, you can omit it completely, and rely on the onions and herbs for flavour. This is perfectly acceptable, especially if you’re serving a lot of flavourful food on the plate already!

Secondly, you can rehydrate dried mushrooms and reserve the soaking water. That way you can add it to the stock later.

Or thirdly, another option is to use a vegan ‘umami flavour enhancer’ such as Yondu or even vegan oyster sauce (which is mushroom based) in a pinch!

Create the liquid mixture wine and stock

Once you’ve created your base and added all of your flavour, the next step is to make the actual gravy!

If you have some red wine leftover from another recipe or just a night on the sofa yesterday evening, this is a great place to use it!

Like the mushroom powder, you can skip this step. But bear in mind that the wine does two jobs. Firstly, it adds a deep, dark colour to this gravy. Secondly, and more importantly, it adds a little bit of much needed acid to the gravy. If you don’t have wine, I’d consider dropping in a capful of vinegar (apple cider, red or white wine etc) right at the end before serving to lighten things up a bit.

Ingredients

Onions

Any kind of onion will work well here, the key is to allow them to brown in the fat.

Fully caramelised onions will add depth and sweetness to the gravy. But be careful not to burn them as they lend a bitter flavour to the gravy.

Alternatively, cook the onions slowly until they fully soften but don’t brown completely. If you go down that route, make sure they are completely soft. We don’t want crunchy onions in every bite of food!

Fat – butter or oil?

If calories aren’t a problem for you, then both!

Butter and onions go together perfectly, and the smell is incredible! At the same time, oil helps ensure the butter doesn’t brown.

Another option is to cook the onions in oil and add a knob of butter just before the cornflour. Once the butter has melted, the cornflour has extra fat to make a roux, which can then be thinned out with the stock later.

Flour / thickener

Any type of flour will technically work here, but if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I favour cornflour when it comes to thickening gravies and roux.

There are two reasons for this. One is that cornflour is readily available in UK supermarkets. This product is known as cornstarch in the USA. Sweet rice flour will also create a silky smooth gluten free onion gravy, but it’s harder to find.

Secondly, cornflour doesn’t leave the grainy taste that I often find all-purpose gluten free flour does.

So for me cornflour is the perfect mix of convenient and functional for a vegetarian Sunday roast.

Aromatics – herbs… mushrooms?

To me, aromatics make or break a vegetarian gravy.

Traditionally, gravy is made with beef dripping. This carries with it all the flavour and mouthfeel that rendered animal fat brings.

For a gluten free vegetarian gravy, our job isn’t exactly to recreate that. It’s to make something flavourful, with a kick of umami, that you’ll actively want to smother your food in.

And to me that means adding the right herbs depending on what you’re serving. Here, i’ve used rosemary and sage, but feel free to use thyme too.

Secondly, I also call for an optional teaspoon of mushroom powder in this dish. Again, controversial choice given I want to cook with easily available ingredients. You can absolutely go with out it… but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important!

Red Wine

Like a great risotto, I love to start off the cooking process here with a splash of red wine. It helps give this gravy its deep, dark colour, as well as adding some acidity to the cooking process.

Feel free to use white wine, vermouth or even nothing at all and move on to the stock. All of these options will result in a lighter coloured gravy, however.

Stock

Any homemade stock will work perfectly, but if all you have is a cube (and make sure it’s gluten free!) then it’ll do.

We’re creating a huge punch of flavour in the base of this stock, with onions, aromatics, and wine. But stock still makes up most of this gravy that you’re going to pour over the rest of your Sunday roast! So use the best stock you have to hand!

To blend or not to blend?

I love this stock served as it comes – with slithers of onion still swimming in the gravy!

However, if you want a smoother gravy, simply toss the finished gravy into the blender. And if you want it smoother still, run through a fine mesh strainer before serving.