How many calories are in beef gravy?
A 1/4-cup serving of beef gravy (60 g) is 32 calories, and per 100 g the sauce runs 53 calories. That makes it one of the lightest things you can pour over a plate. The catch sits one row lower on the label: that same quarter cup carries 380 mg of sodium.
You'd need to walk about 6 minutes to burn the 32 calories in a 1/4-cup (60 g) serving.
How long does it take to burn off beef gravy?
A 1/4-cup (60 g) serving is 32 kcal. Enter your weight and the amount you ate to see how long it takes you to burn that off:
lb
| Activity | Time to burn 32 kcal |
|---|---|
| Walking, brisk | 6 min |
| Cycling, moderate | 4 min |
| Swimming, moderate | 5 min |
| Jogging | 4 min |
| Weight training, moderate | 7 min |
Times are for a 155 lb adult at a steady pace; change the weight to see yours. The amount is set to the portion in the text (60 g); change it to what you actually ate. BodyPal works this out from your steps automatically.
On this page
- Beef gravy quick facts
- US servings from a tablespoon to a full cup
- Canned fat-free and instant dry mix
- Beef with gravy is a different food
- Sodium is the row to watch
- How does beef gravy compare?
- Most popular beef gravy brands
- FAQ
Beef gravy quick facts
The numbers below come from the USDA entry FNDDS 2707145, "Gravy, beef". That is the ready-to-serve sauce, the thing you actually hold: a can you heat, a jar you pour, a carton you warm in a saucepan. The older SR Legacy record for canned ready-to-serve beef gravy, 171564, reports identical values; the household measures for a cup and a quarter cup hang on the FNDDS entry, so that is the one used here.
Anyone searching for gravy calories is usually deciding whether a ladle is worth logging. It is, but not for the reason most people expect.
| Nutrient | Per 100 g | Per 1/4 cup (60 g) | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 53 | 32 | — |
| Total fat | 2.36 g | 1.4 g | 2% |
| Saturated fat | 1.15 g | 0.7 g | 3% |
| Carbohydrate | 4.81 g | 2.9 g | 1% |
| Dietary fiber | 0.4 g | 0.2 g | 1% |
| Total sugars | 0.21 g | 0.1 g | — |
| Protein | 3.75 g | 2.3 g | 4% |
| Sodium | 633 mg | 380 mg | 17% |
% Daily Value is based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
Verified nutrition data
Numbers on this page come from USDA FoodData Central, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food composition database, and from manufacturer labels where a branded product is named. Last verified September 2026. How we verify our data →
Cholesterol is 3 mg per 100 g, so 2 mg in a quarter cup, and potassium is 81 mg per 100 g, 49 mg per serving — both about 1% of the Daily Value. Two rows you will not find here are added sugars and trans fat: USDA does not publish either value for this gravy record, so quoting them would mean inventing them.
US servings from a tablespoon to a full cup
Gravy is poured, not measured, which is where logging goes wrong. A restrained spoonful over sliced roast beef and a soaked open-faced sandwich are the same food at very different weights.
| Serving | Weight | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| 1 tbsp | 15 g | 8 kcal |
| 2 tbsp | 30 g | 16 kcal |
| 1 oz | 28.35 g | 15 kcal |
| 1/4 cup, the label serving | 60 g | 32 kcal |
| 1/2 cup | 120 g | 64 kcal |
| 1 cup | 240 g | 127 kcal |
| Per 100 g | 100 g | 53 kcal |
The 1/4 cup and the 1 cup are USDA household measures tied to the record. The tablespoon, half cup, and ounce lines are our own arithmetic from the USDA 100 g figure, not USDA servings — useful, but scaled rather than published.
Two practical notes. A cup of gravy weighs 240 g, about eight and a half ounces, so "a cup" and "an ounce" are almost an order of magnitude apart; people who log by eye tend to split that difference and land wrong. And even the heaviest realistic pour, a full cup, is still only 127 calories.
Canned fat-free and instant dry mix
The version in your hand changes the math more than the brand does — with one exception that changes it enormously.
| Version | Per 100 g | Typical serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canned beef gravy, ready-to-serve | 53 kcal | 1/4 cup (60 g) | 32 kcal |
| Fat-free beef gravy | 53 kcal | 1/4 cup (60 g) | 32 kcal |
| Heinz Home Style savory beef | 39 kcal | 1/4 cup (60 g) | 23 kcal |
| Instant beef gravy, dry mix | 369 kcal | 1 oz (28.35 g) | 105 kcal |
The fat-free line is the surprise. USDA's fat-free beef gravy record carries 53 calories and 2.36 g of fat per 100 g — the same values as the regular entry, digit for digit. Whatever the front of the package says, the data behind it does not separate the two, so a quarter cup is 32 calories either way.
The dry mix is a different animal because it has no water in it. At 369 calories per 100 g it is seven times the ready-to-serve sauce, and an ounce of powder is 105 calories before it ever meets a saucepan. Once you whisk that ounce into water it dilutes back down; the number only bites if you log the packet as if it were sauce.
Store brands sit slightly under the generic USDA figure. Campbell's beef gravy runs 25 calories per 1/4 cup in the 10.5 oz can and 31 in the 13.8 oz can, Great Value lands between 25 and 30 depending on which recipe is on the shelf, and McCormick is the lightest of the group at 20 per quarter cup. Campbell's prints its serving in milliliters, so those figures assume a pour of roughly 1 g per mL. Homemade pan gravy has no USDA record at all — thickened drippings will sit above the canned numbers on fat, but there is no published value to put on it.
Beef with gravy is a different food
This is the trap in the search results. "Beef gravy" and "beef with gravy" are two separate USDA records, and people log the wrong one constantly.
| Dish | Per 100 g | US serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef with gravy | 156 kcal | 1 cup (244 g) | 381 kcal |
| Beef and rice with gravy | 137 kcal | 1 cup (222 g) | 304 kcal |
A cup of beef with gravy is 381 calories — close to twelve times the quarter cup of sauce this page is about — because the meat is doing the work. It also carries 21.56 g of protein per 100 g against the sauce's 3.75 g. Beef and rice with gravy comes in at 137 calories per 100 g, and beef and noodles with gravy at 139; in both cases the starch, not the sauce, sets the number.
If you plated meat and poured gravy over it, log them as two entries. If you scooped a stew-like mixture out of one pot, the combined record is the right pick.
Sodium is the row to watch
Calories are not the reason to think about gravy. Sodium is.
| Serving | Sodium | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|
| 2 tbsp (30 g) | 190 mg | 8% |
| 1/4 cup (60 g) | 380 mg | 17% |
| 1/2 cup (120 g) | 760 mg | 33% |
| 1 cup (240 g) | 1519 mg | 66% |
The FDA sets the Daily Value for sodium at 2,300 mg, and the CDC notes that most Americans are already well above that before they add anything at the table. A full cup of beef gravy is 1,519 mg on its own, two-thirds of the day, or roughly two-thirds of a teaspoon of table salt — from something that costs 127 calories.
That is an unusual ratio. A quarter cup gives you 17% of the sodium Daily Value for 2% of the fat and about 1.6% of a 2,000-calorie day. The instant dry mix is steeper still, at 5,203 mg per 100 g; an ounce of powder works out to 1,475 mg, 64% of the Daily Value, by our arithmetic from that 100 g figure.
The practical read: if you are watching sodium, gravy is worth measuring even though it barely registers on calories. Two tablespoons over potatoes costs 16 calories and 8% of the day's sodium — a fair trade. Half a cup ladled over an open-faced sandwich costs 64 calories and a third of the day's sodium, which is not.
How does beef gravy compare?
| Sauce or dish | Per 100 g | US serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef gravy | 53 kcal | 1/4 cup (60 g) | 32 kcal |
| Heinz Home Style savory beef gravy | 39 kcal | 1/4 cup (60 g) | 23 kcal |
| Beef with gravy | 156 kcal | 1 cup (244 g) | 381 kcal |
| Instant beef gravy, dry mix | 369 kcal | 1 oz (28.35 g) | 105 kcal |
Our take: on calories alone, gravy is a non-issue, and swapping brands to save the nine calories between the Heinz jar and the generic record is wasted effort. The Heinz-style recipe is the lightest of the four per 100 g at 39 calories, but it still brings 587 mg of sodium per 100 g, 352 mg in a quarter cup. If you are cutting calories, spend your attention on what the gravy is sitting on; if you are cutting sodium, measure the gravy itself and stop at two tablespoons. And keep the dry mix in its own column — 369 calories per 100 g is a pantry number, not a plate number.
Most popular beef gravy brands in the United States
Ranked by how widely each product appears among foods sold in the United States, from the BodyPal food database of over 3.3 million products. Calories are the figures printed on each Nutrition Facts label, checked against USDA FoodData Central.
| Product | Calories (per 100 g) |
|---|---|
| Campbell's Beef Gravy (10.5 oz can) | 42 cal |
| Campbell's Beef Gravy (13.8 oz can) | 51 cal |
| McCormick Beef Gravy | 32 cal |
| Great Value Beef Gravy | 42 cal |
| Great Value Beef Gravy (078742009995) | 50 cal |
| Best Choice Beef Gravy | 42 cal |
Brand popularity: BodyPal food database. Nutrition: manufacturer labels / USDA FoodData Central.
Beef gravy FAQs
How many calories are in beef gravy?
A 1/4-cup serving is 32 calories, and 100 g of ready-to-serve beef gravy is 53 calories. A full cup, the amount that ends up on an open-faced sandwich, is 127. Gravy is one of the few things on a dinner plate where the calorie line barely moves the total.
How many calories in 1/4 cup of beef gravy?
32 calories in 1/4 cup (60 g), the serving size printed on most cans and jars. That quarter cup also brings 2.3 g of protein, 2.9 g of carbohydrate, and 1.4 g of fat. The number that matters more is 380 mg of sodium, 17% of a day's Daily Value.
How many calories in a tablespoon of beef gravy?
About 8 calories per tablespoon (15 g), our own arithmetic from the USDA 100 g figure rather than a USDA serving. Two tablespoons, a normal ladle over mashed potatoes, is 16 calories and 190 mg of sodium. Even four tablespoons keeps the sauce under 35 calories.
How much sodium is in beef gravy?
633 mg per 100 g, which works out to 380 mg in a 1/4-cup serving and 1,519 mg in a full cup. That cup is 66% of the 2,300 mg Daily Value, or roughly two-thirds of a teaspoon of table salt, from a sauce worth only 127 calories.
Is fat-free beef gravy lower in calories?
No. USDA lists fat-free beef gravy at 53 calories per 100 g with 2.36 g of fat, the same numbers as the regular entry, so a 1/4 cup is still 32 calories. The label claim does not show up in the data. Brand cans vary more than the fat-free wording does.
How many calories in Campbell's beef gravy?
25 calories per 1/4 cup for the 10.5 oz can (42 per 100 g) and 31 for the 13.8 oz can (51 per 100 g). McCormick is lighter at 20 per 1/4 cup, Great Value runs 25 to 30 depending on the recipe. All sit near the USDA generic 32.
How many calories in homemade beef gravy?
USDA does not publish a record for homemade pan gravy, so there is no verified number to quote. The closest published match is ready-to-serve beef gravy at 53 calories per 100 g and 32 per 1/4 cup. Homemade versions thickened with pan drippings and flour will run higher in fat.
Is beef gravy keto friendly?
A 1/4 cup carries 2.9 g of carbohydrate, so a normal ladle fits most low-carb days. A full cup is 11.5 g, which is where it starts to matter. The dry instant mix is the one to avoid: 61.1 g of carbohydrate per 100 g before any water goes in.
Similar foods
- Clementine — 35 cal per clementine
- Ceviche — 158 cal per cup
- Tom yum soup — 191 cal per bowl
- Pomegranate — 72 cal for 1/2 cup arils
- Clam Chowder — 237 cal per cup
- Chinese Chicken and Broccoli — 206 cal per cup
Count it without the math
Point the camera at the plate and BodyPal counts the gravy along with everything under it.
