I tried Cliff Richard’s recipe for the ‘best gravy in the world’ – and it is absolutely disgusting

Every British household seems to have its own special method of making gravy.

And 84-year-old pop singer Cliff Richard – a self-confessed Christmas fanatic – is no different.

Cliff shocked chefs and scientists alike with his highly unorthodox recipe, which forgoes the traditional method of mixing roasting juices with wine.

Controversially, he fries some onions and adds eight stock cubes – two each of lamb, chicken, beef and vegetables – followed by boiling water.

For a touch of umami, he then adds teriyaki, soy and Worcestershire sauce – a combination described by experts as ‘absolutely despicable’.

Cliff claims his gravy is ‘probably the best in the world’ and hopes to team up with a food manufacturer to sell it in stores.

He told Woman’s Weekly: ‘I’m still waiting for a company to offer me a deal.’

But what does his unusual recipe actually taste like? MailOnline’s Jonathan Chadwick recreated Cliff’s gravy to see if it could take a sacred place at the lunch table on Christmas Day.

Cliff first made the gravy on an episode of ITV’s This Morning in December 2016, where he described it as ‘a bit like art’.

He told Holly and Phillip: ‘It’s a great gravy and the great thing is that my sister could never get her children to eat gravy because they didn’t like hers.

“I ended up having to make a gravy and freeze it a few weeks before Christmas so they could come and pick it up.”

Religiously following Cliff Richard’s instructions, I cook two onions in oil with a few tablespoons of mixed spices until soft.

Cliff and I use the old-fashioned stock powder that comes in compact cubes, instead of the trendy jelly stock pots that are everywhere these days.

Although they may seem passé to some, top chefs are still fans of the powder cubes, including Marcus Wareing, who described them as ‘an adrenaline rush’ for dishes such as bolognese and stew.

With difficulty, I crumble all eight Oxo cubes between my fingers, directly on the mixture and gradually add water, bringing it to the boil to thicken it.

Crikey, that’s a lot of stock. Wherever Cliff Richard goes at Christmas, he’s sure to leave a trail of bouillon cube containers behind him.

Then Cliff said he thickened his gravy a little with some gravy powder, but I’m not worried about that because my gravy looks thick enough already.

In case you weren’t familiar with Cliff, Oxo stock cubes are packed with a rich blend of thickeners, including wheat flour, corn starch and onion powder.

Finally, I add the special ingredients that seemed to give Holly Willoughby such a horrible horror – a tablespoon each of teriyaki, soy and Worcestershire sauce.

As I stir the mixture well, the whole method seems worthy of “George’s Miraculous Medicine” to me: just find what you can and throw it in for good measure.

Cliff’s gravy has the honor of accompanying my homemade Sunday roast chicken with roasted spuds and carrots, but before I serve it up, I take a cautious sip.

The closest I can compare it to is an over-salted packet of Walkers chicken chips – as if a young factory worker had been too generous with the seasoning.

It’s just so salty – and the subtle flavors of teriyaki, soy and Worcestershire sauce are all lost because they’re completely drowned out by the sodium.

Granted, the combination of four different broths means it’s not without flavor, but there are no subtle meaty flavor profiles, no subtle umami kick.

Like Cliff’s video for “Mistletoe and Wine,” this brown Christmas concoction is the epitome of blandness—and it’s not actually gravy at all.

According to Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, among others, a real gravy uses the juices and sediment of the roasted meat and vegetables as a starting point.

You deglaze the bottom of the roasting tin with a good quality homemade stock, wine, cider or even plain water, before adding herbs, chopped onions and tomatoes.

Some even add yeast extract, such as Marmite or tomato ketchup, according to Dr. Nathan Kilah, a food scientist from the University of Tasmania.

“These ingredients will broaden the flavor profile through sweetness (sugar), acidity (vinegar, citric acid and malic acid) and umami in the case of tomato sauce (natural glutamates, such as those found in MSG),” he said.

Personally, this year I’m using the liquid stock from my ham joint with herbs and wine – without a single stock cube in sight.