The summer months are all about vinaigrettes and a squeeze of lemon, but as the temperatures drop, thick brown and white gravy comes back into fashion. While you can create a perfectly smooth and savory sauce, you can avoid the dreaded thick cooling phase at the table. Keep your gravy warm and silky smooth by serving it in a vacuum-insulated bottle.

Gravy is thickened with starch, which can be cornstarch, flour, or starch from another source. Starch activates with water and heat, gelatinizing and turning runny liquids into slow-flowing fluids that coat your food instead of pooling underneath it. Starch continues to thicken as it cools, however. Serving temperature is when the gravy reaches that perfect balance of thick and not too hot, but that moment is short-lived. The gravy continues to cool at the table, and just as you're ready to pour it out of the boat, the smooth gravy has developed a skin on the surface — the coolest parts have begun to solidify. Soon it will be a consistency more like Jell-O.

That's why gravy boats need to be replaced with gravy bottles. The gravy needs the help of the powerful insulation that these common reusable water bottles provide.

When shopping for a better gravy container, structure matters. Single-walled insulated containers and ceramic gravy boats are about as effective as using a mug. Better than a can, but even a thick ceramic wall still conducts heat, albeit slowing the process down a bit. Double-walled, vacuum-insulated bottles, however, have a space between the two walls. This pocket prevents heat energy transfer, keeping everything inside at nearly the same temperature for an unthinkably long time.