Matty Matheson Says These 2 Ingredients Are the Secret to Making Better Gravy

When you want to add a punch of flavor to something, the first person you should turn to is Matty Matheson. The 42-year-old chef, restaurateur, and actor in “The Bear” is bold in everything he does. His YouTube videos are colorfully edited, captioned in all caps, and liberally sprinkled with curse words — even his fictional television character, handyman Neil Fak, is over the top.

So the chef was an obvious choice when I went looking for advice on how to quickly take any gravy to the next level. And let’s be honest, a lot of gravies are woefully lackluster, so we could all use a trick up our sleeve to easily amp them up before the big turkey day.

While chatting with Matheson about his third and most recent cookbook, Matty Matheson: Soups, Salads, and Sandwiches, and his recent partnership with Pacific Foods aimed at fighting the “Sunday scaries” via easy weekend meal prep, the Canada-born chef told me that developing a lot of flavor in gravy can be achieved with three ingredients: using good-quality stock to start, and in a surprising twist, adding in a touch of soy sauce and/or ketchup.

Putting ketchup and soy sauce in your Thanksgiving gravy might seem unexpected, but it's actually a classic flavor combination in a lot of Japanese comfort foods. Yōshoku, a category of Japanese cuisine that’s influenced by Western foods, often relies on one or both of these ingredients for sweet and savory elements. Spaghetti napolitan, an itameshi dish that's also often referred to as "Japanese ketchup spaghetti," uses ketchup in the pasta sauce, alongside either soy sauce or Worcestershire. Meanwhile, the beautifully silky omelet, omurice, is wrapped around fried rice seasoned with ketchup and soy sauce. 

Packed with umami, tomatoes and soy are both naturally rich in glutamate. And the sweet-and-salty flavor of the two condiments helps balance each other out. It’s a match made in heaven.

To test out Matheson’s tip at home, I’d recommend first trying it with a simple or classic gravy. If you typically thicken a stock with roux to make your holiday gravy and don’t mix in anything else, then these two additions would give it a deeper, more complex flavor profile. You could also stir them into other, more nuanced, gravy recipes, depending on what seasonings are already in them. For example, ketchup or soy sauce might complement a gravy with miso and mushrooms in it. But I wouldn't put them in a gravy that has several different herbs because the flavors might compete too much.

When using this technique, add the soy sauce and ketchup before you stir in your stock so they can be easily whisked in. Matheson told Food and Wine that, by way of order, he suggests stirring together “your butter, your flour, make your roux, and then you add ketchup or soy sauce.” He says you can use either one or the two together, so it’s okay if you don’t have both. Just make sure to incorporate them incrementally so you don’t end up with a sauce that’s overly sweet or salty.

Another pro tip from Matheson? If you’re making soup on a weeknight — or a Sunday perhaps — and don’t have time to simmer it for several hours, then a splash of soy sauce can help give it a super savory flavor quickly. In the words of the chef, “Soy sauce goes very far.” (I think it’s safe to say he probably goes through bottles of it pretty quickly in his household, and I don’t blame him.)

Armed with the powerhouse ingredients of one of my favorite actors and chefs, I’ll be heading into Thanksgiving season, ready to make the best gravy of my life.