Also grits mixed with pesto and parmesan are sublime!
To make red-eye gravy you use the grease left over from frying the country ham and mix it with black coffee. The finished product is brown, not red.
It was really hard for me to eat, as a vegetarian, in New Orleans. I’ve had more success in semi-rural parts of Wisconsin, not to mention everywhere else I’ve gone on business trips.
Meat doesn’t have “blood” in it after butchering, and that goes double for anything cured. You may see some cuts of non-cured meats with a little pink water around it, but that’s just myoglobin. It’s definitely from the coffee in this case.
Is this a whoosh? Red eye gravy isn’t red, it’s gravy colored. It gets its color mostly from the coffee, I believe, as well as the Maillard reaction from the proteins and sugars in the ham. There’s not an appreciable amount of “blood” in a ham. Intracellular fluid, perhaps (although not much, if it’s cured), but not blood. Blood travels in vessels, and a pig is bled out after slaughter. Hams in particular are soaked in salt to cure, which draws out almost all remaining blood from the capillaries in the muscle.
Certainly there’s no MORE blood in red eye gravy than in the ham you’re eating on Easter.
ETA: Ooh…what’s this “third page” thingy? Sorry spoke-, didn’t mean to make it a pile on.
You never went to Faidley’s, you poor misguided soul.
I hate you. The first place we owned was centered walking distance from Aglamesis and Graeter’s. We hardly ever got down to Graeter’s, unless we were eating at Doodles or someplace in Hyde Park. Agree that Graeter’s is okay, but Aglamesis is worth a trip.
there is no blood in red eye gravy.
It is made by frying up the ham, and deglazing the pan with coffee …
And the process of making ham [soaking in brine to start with] ‘koshers’ the meat by pulling the blood out of the meat.
I don’t know how they get away with calling it a steak sandwich. It’s actually a kind of mutant (bad) cheeseburger.
No, no you are not the only one who thinks that. “Loose meat” always makes me vaguely think there’ll be “loose stool” a few hours in my future, too.
Yeah. If you want to eat vegetarian in NO, you really have to do your homework ahead. I’ve been on a couple of business trips with a vegetarian, and it was agony trying to find someplace to eat in the French Quarter with her in tow – endlessly roaming up and down the streets, reading the menus, then her sighing and saying “well, I suppose I’ll just have a baked potato…”
And yet, after the second trip, one of our cohorts was able to find some good options a little further out, with only some minimal research.
Strict vegans, I’d think, would be doomed to drinking straight water. Pescatarians probably would get along pretty well… since it often seems there’s fish- or sea- stuff in just about everything (non-vegetarian cohort had to epi-pen himself at least once that I recall after specifically asking for no-shellfish).
We did find a restaurant within a couple blocks of the hotel that not only had good food for me, but also for a dining companion with celiac disease - no wheat, oats, barley, rye, or any flour or extracts derived from those. That was the last meal of the trip, though.
Oh, as an outsider looking in - chicory is overrated for New Orleans, as well. If you want coffee with more flavor, get more varieties or roast it darker. I freely admit, though, that I’m a coffee wuss and prefer my caffeine sweet. I developed a chicory allergy since my trip (it shows up in all sorts of high-fiber/“natural” food as chicory root fiber or inulin) so I think it’ll be a long time before I return. And I’m bringing my emergency kit with my epi-pen when I do.
A vegetarian and a celiac disease, in NO? Oy.
Heh, sounds like our trio that was vegetarian, fish-allergic, and nut-allergic. I’m amazed we didn’t have someone spontaneously burst into flames at some meal or other there. 
Red eye gravy can be made with coffee or with water. (My old-timer dad used the latter.) Yes, it is brownish, but it also has a reddish tinge. (Hence it is called “red eye” - or did y’all think the name was ironic?)
I always assumed the reddish color was from blood, but I am open to being convinced otherwise. (If there is no blood in cured meat, what makes ham pink?)
(Missed edit window.) I see Ferret Herder has answered that last question with myoglobin. Ignorance fought!
(Red eye gravy is still disgusting, though. It’s a greasy mess.)
The curing process. Nitrites/nitrates in the brine used to cure ham keep it a pink color. Ever notice how corned beef is red when cooked? Yep, nitrites/nitrates. Also, smoke can be responsible for a pink hue in cooked meat. If you ever have barbecue, you’ll notice a pink “smoke ring” around the outside of the meat. This happens when carbon monoxide reacts with myoglobin in the meat.
What nitrites? Salt is used to cure country ham (at least when it’s done the old-fashioned way). Good old NaCl.
No, again, I thought the name came from the coffee - the caffeine in coffee being a thing that most people employ to function during red-eye (overnight or very early morning) travel. Of course, that’s entirely my folk etymology, I have no idea *really *why it’s called that. But blood never occurred to me. I cook enough to know there’s no blood there.
I’ve never heard of red-eye gravy made without coffee, you see. But I’m just a silly Yankee girl. 
Most hams and cured sausages I’m familiar with have some sort of nitrite or nitrate added as a preservative and for color, either in the form of Prague powder (which contains sodium nitrite) or potassium nitrate. I don’t know if all country hams are made this way. If they’re not, and they’re still pink, then that would be a result of the smoking process. A week of smoking at around 100 degrees (as per that link) should result in a decent pink color throughout the meat.
I myself have made my own ham but without the nitrites/nitrates and, after curing, I hot smoked them at 225-250. The result is a pink color on the edges, but not all the way inside the meat. As far as I know, the smoke ring occurs up to about 140F and then stops forming. Like I said, if your country ham is pink and doesn’t contain nitrites/nitrates, it must be from the long, slow cold smoking process.
Are you absolutely sure only salt is used in the curing process? Lots of old fashioned curing recipes call for saltpetre.
As a Marylander born and raised, I can tell you that the experience is a BIG part of the crab love. Sitting around with friends and drinking beer, and picking crabs. It’s a day long type of thing. We did it for my mom’s 80th birthday. It was her request. It wasn’t the crabs she wanted, but all her children and grandchildren around, eating, talking and laughing.
I live in Texas now. Count me as another person not in love with BBQ. Sausage is big around here in Austin. Feh. I’m not impressed. I like brisket enough, but it doesn’t give me an O face, if you catch the drift.
I went to school in North Carolina. The pork BBQ there is pretty darn good. I suppose it colored my ideas about BBQ in general.
More on Country ham’s red color.
Another site on country ham curing.
One correction: I mentioned a brine above. Country ham is dry-cured. So, either saltpeter or smoking or a combination of both yield the reddish color.
I was curious, so I did me some googlin’, and here’s what I found: I dunno.