21: The "Golden Formula" for delighting your audience
Today we're taking a tasty little break from regularly scheduled copywriting programming because it's my mission to make your life easier and to demystify and simplify copywriting and marketing so you can get your beautiful voice and message and impact out into the world.
I love sharing tips and hacks to make your business and your life a little easier and more joyful. And that's why today on ill communication, I'm not going to be sharing a copy recipe. Instead, I'm sharing a food recipe for one of the most challenging items on the holiday table. You guessed it, gravy!
The thing is, making gravy can be tricky. There are totally different techniques. Do you shake the flour and water together and then add them to the drippings? Or do you add the flour to the drippings to make a roux and then whisk in the broth? What do you do about the lumps?
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why I’m not sharing a copy recipe today
Why cooking gravy is so tricky
The golden formula for cooking gravy
The golden formula for gravy has made cooking big holiday dinners so much easier and more enjoyable for me and my table guests. It's kind of like the copywriting formulas and frameworks I've collected and created over the years. They help take the stress out of writing great copy.
I share oodles of copy recipes and formulas with my newsletter subscribers and Inside the Joy of Copy Club. Join us today!
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Welcome to Ill. Communication. Copywriting Tips and Sales Strategies for Small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and changemakers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing. Out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you. Generate more leads, book more. Calls, and get more high value. Clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be. Feeling and find confidence in your copywriting. So you can get your message out. There and attract more soul mate clients. Let's get. Started. In the days leading up to a big family dinner. It keeps us up at night. In the moments before mealtime, we get sweaty from the stress and the stirring. It's something home chefs everywhere fear. Dun dun da! Making gravy. Hey there. And welcome back to another episode of Ill Communication. Today we're taking a tasty little break from regularly scheduled copywriting programing because it's my mission through this podcast and through my copywriting services and copy coaching to make your life easier, to demystify and simplify copywriting and marketing so you can get your beautiful voice and message and impact out into the world. I love sharing tips and hacks to make your business and your life a little easier and more joyful. And that's why today I'm not going to be sharing a copy recipe. Instead, I'm sharing a food recipe for one of the most challenging items on the holiday table. You guessed it, gravy. Everyone wants it and everyone is quick to judge if the gravy goes wrong. Am I right? I mean, just ask my mom. She is normally an A-plus gravy maker, but one time she made a terrible gluey gravy On one of the first holidays. My boyfriend and now husband Chad, attended. The gravy was memorably bad, and to this day, it's the butt of several bad gravy jokes. The thing is, making gravy can be tricky. There are totally different techniques. Do you shake the flour and water together and then add to the drippings?
Or do you add the flour to the drippings to make a roux and then whisk in the broth? What do you do about the lumps? Should you cheat and use a packaged gravy mix? Oh, cooking a fancy dinner out the holidays is stressful enough and then you add gravy to the mix and it's no wonder we home cooks end up getting stressed. And that's why, my friend, I'm here to solve your gravy stress with the golden formula for gravy. You see, once I discovered this formula from a photocopy of an old Food Network magazine recipe a friend gave to me. I've been pretty solid in way less stressed in my gravy making, and I'm so excited to share it with you. So here's the golden formula for gravy. Half a cup of drippings. Add extra fat to top it up as needed. Half a cup of flour, eight cups of broth heated. Measure out half a cup of the pan drippings or butter or fat into your roasting pan or a saucepan over medium heat. Sprinkle the flour into the pan and cook, stirring constantly for several minutes until the flour browns slightly slowly whisk the hot broth into the roux. The flour mixture. Bring this to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium low. You can add any additional dark roasting juices that have accumulated at the bottom of your measuring cup back into the gravy. Then simmer until the gravy thickens about 10 minutes and definitely season with salt and pepper to taste. Now I like to judge it up a little by stirring in a little bourbon or some compound butter, which is butter with a bunch of fresh herbs chopped into it. And if you need a vegan gravy, just substitute vegan butter for the fat and use veggie broth. You might need to add a little soy sauce or miso paste to add a little umami or depth of flavor. Now, with Christmas and New Year just a couple of weeks away, I've already pulled the golden formula for gravy out of my recipe box in prep for the holidays, and that's why I wanted to share it with you today. I'll drop the link to the recipe on the Food Network site in the show notes.
The golden formula for gravy has made cooking big holiday dinners so much easier and more enjoyable for me and for my table guests. It's kind of like the copywriting formulas and frameworks I've collected and created over the years. They help take the stress out of writing great copy, and I share oodles of copy recipes and formulas with my newsletter subscribers and Inside the Joy of Copy Club. So I'll leave links to both of those in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining me today for this very different episode of Ill Communication. And before I go, I want to leave you with this. You can totally send a random email or create a social post or an out of the ordinary podcast about something that's bringing you joy or saving your life like a great gravy recipe. Not everything we write or send has to be a teaching moment. You can simply share something delightful with your audience in the same way that you share something delightful with your friends, whether it's your favorite recipe, a Spotify playlist, or a holiday movie recommendation. Your people will love getting to know you and receiving a friendly, personable email from you. Especially these days. I don't know about you, but the second half of 2022 was hard and I think we all could use a little break from our regular list. Scheduled programing. So go ahead and share some kind of content with your audience that brings you joy. I promise it will bring others a little joy, too. Thank you so much for joining me today and every. Week on ill communication. I'll see you next time. And that's a wrap on today's episode of WL Communication. Hey, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, I would love if you would leave a rating and a review to let me know. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss out on the tips, prompts and strategies I share in every episode. They're designed to make you an ill communicator too. As always, you can check out all the links and resources from this episode on the web page. Just head over to Kim dot com slash podcast.
I'll chat with you again next week.
Resources Mentioned
“Dramatic Trailer Music" by Ross Bugden
Additional Resources
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