Part two in my “Ask the Dope for cooking advice” series of threads.
I didn’t grow up inb the south, so the only sausage gravy i’ve ever had is the frozen Bob Evans kind. I found a recipe on the Bob Evans website that looked promising, but it came out bland and too thick, and the leftovers turned into a solid gelatinous brick when I stuck them in the fridge overnight.
What’s your secrets? How much flour should you use? How long should it simmer for, if at all? I await enlightenment.
It’s been a while since I made sausage gravy. But that’s not going to stop me!
First, you gotta cook the bulk sausage. Let it brown and crumble and cook it thoroughly. Then remove all the little crumbles from the pan until you are an experienced hand at this. Look at the amount of grease left in the pan. You want to put in about an equal amount of flour. If you’re not sure, then measure the grease. You probably won’t have too much grease if you’re using sausage. I used about one portion of sausage (whatever the package said was one portion) for each serving, and it wasn’t too much.
The classic proportions are 2 tablespoons each of flour and grease, and 1 cup of milk, for about a cup of gravy/white sauce/bechamel. If you don’t think you have enough fat for the amount of gravy that you want to make, you can add butter or bacon grease. Have your flour and milk on hand BEFORE you start making the gravy. If you are totally new to making a cream sauce (and that’s all sausage gravy really is) you might want to warm up the milk the first few times you make it.
Sprinkle in the flour. Whisk it, with a wire whisk. Keep on whisking. Seriously, you can’t stop. You have to whisk the flour and fat mixture until it’s completely smooth, and keep whisking as you let it bubble and brown a bit. And you do want it to brown a little bit, maybe even brown a lot. Like all sauces with flour in them, you want the flour well cooked. Keep whisking and slowly pour in the milk. Don’t pour all the milk in at once, dribble it in, and when you think you’ve almost got enough, then stop pouring and whisk some more. Let the milk come up to temperature, and the gravy will thicken somewhat, then you pour in a bit more milk as needed.
When the gravy is warm and bubbly and just thick enough, add the sausage crumbles back in. Taste. It probably doesn’t need salt, especially if you used some bacon grease, but most people like pepper, and they especially like fresh ground pepper (which is why I don’t eat it these days). This should be flavorful enough without any other seasonings, though you can put a bit of ground sage in it if you like it. This homemade gravy will also turn into a solid brick if you put it in the fridge, but it will become liquid again when heated.
You can let it keep warm for a while, if your biscuits aren’t quite done yet. Stir it every now and then. My husband and other people will also eat this gravy on top of hash browns or even plain old toast.
Oh yes, and you really DO need a whisk, not a spoon or spatula when you make this.
I’m not posting mine again, as people get all snotty about how it’s “not real Southern gravy”. They’re right: it actually has flavor and depth.
Lynn’s instructions are the way I make it. I use half & half instead of regular milk, it makes it more creamy. Jimmy Dean’s sausage with sage is great for this gravy.
I drain all the grease and make a roux using butter.
You are blowing whatever diet you might be on by eating this anyway, a few more calories won’t matter.
Gotta have lots of black pepper. Sorry Lynn.
Sorry about earlier post; having a cranky day.
I brown sausage in a pan getting it fairly brown. I usually use Jones Country Sausage, but any breakfast sausage will do. I think pretty much any loose sausage meat will produce a good gravy. With the sausage still in the pan turn down the heat and stir in flour with a fork until it becomes a dry sausage roux. If the sausage is on the lean side add some oil, bacon grease, or butter so it will take more flour. Turning the heat back up a little I slowly stir in heavy cream. This will thicken a lot as it cooks so don’t skimp on the cream. For 1 lb. of sausage I’ll use about 1 1/2 pints of cream. Add some coarse black pepper and fine red pepper and keep over low heat while you make the rest of breakfast.
Yup, that’s pretty much how I do it except I use 2% milk instead of heavy cream (makes it healthy dontchaknow!). I add the flour while the sausage is still in the pan and just mix it in while the flour cooks until it can’t take any more (I kinda slide the sausage around to soak up any grease with the flour I’m adding. It’s probably not as smooth as if you whisk in the flour without the sausage in the pan, but it works for me.
We only make sausage gravy when we’re having sausage patties (and eggs etc) so here’s how we do it…
Pour some milk in a bowl and set aside.
Slice a pound of ground sausage (it’s easier if it’s a little frozen) and fry the patties along with the end pieces between medium and low. While they’re cooking pick out two or three to break up for the gravy.
Take out the patties when they’re done. There’s usually not enough grease in the pan so add some bacon grease. Start with one or two spoons of flour and add salt and pepper. Stir. You might need a little more grease, or a little more flour. You want it a little more “greasy” than it is “flour-y.” I go for a slurry.
Let that brown for a few seconds while you stir, then slowly add the milk. This is going to take a lottt of stirring. If you don’t keep stirring it can seperate.
Just let it cook for a few minutes while stirring almost continuously. Test it by scooping some up and letting it pour out of the spoon. You don’t want thin, you want it slightly creamy but not thick. When you scrape the edge of the spoon across the bottom of the skillet and it leaves a track, like a wake in the water, it’s done so pour it into a bowl. And stir it.
Gravy continues to thicken so take it up right before you think it’s “right.” You can heat it in the microwave the next day if you only zap it a few seconds at a time and…stir.
I’m assuming that the OP is new to making a white sauce, which is why I recommend taking out the sausage bits and warming up the milk. It’s easier for beginners to make a good cream gravy that way, and when they get a little more experience, then they can leave the bits in the pan and pour in cold milk, rather than warm.
Chefguy, your recipe had bacon, butter, and cream. What’s not to like?
Typically, sausage gravy is cheap eats, whereupon you can keep adding milk to the gravy and cooking up more biscuits until everyone at the table has been fed. Glorifying cheap eats with prime ingredients can only improve food.
When I was a kid, my mom made elegant little toast cups and would stir up a pan of white gravy into which she’d add dried chipped beef and peas and diced onions. I always thought the meal was delightful.
My dad, who had served 20 years in the military, never turned down that supper dish.
It wasn’t until later years that I found the name to this toothsome morsel was “SOS,” an abbreviation for “Shit on a Shingle.”
SOS is standard military fare, and means any type of meat drowning in a white gravy, served over some type of bread. Planks of toast were ideal shingles. The meat usually consisted of greasy hamburger, and the idea was to feed as many GIs as possible on very little food.
~VOW
I remember SOS quite well from my 23 years in the military. Pretty ghastly stuff, as I recall, but it was cheap and easy to make. I think they just dumped cans of chipped beef into the pot and added milk. For all I know, it came pre-canned and was just heated up. As a Seabee, I ate in a lot of Marine chow halls: those guys could really fuck up a meal.
Why do you drain the grease and then add butter? I think that the sausage grease makes for more sausage flavor. I’m pretty sure that butter and sausage grease are equally unhealthy.
Oh, and my husband reminded me that sometimes I add some chicken base (Better than Bullion) to the gravy. And he wants to know if he can have toast and gravy this weekend.
I brown the sausage in the rendered bacon fat, so you get a double dose of yum.
1 to 1.5 pounds bulk pork breakfast sausage, preferably with sage (such as Jimmy Dean)
½ t0 ¾ pound bacon, sliced across grain in ¼” strips
1-2 TBSP canola or other neutral oil
About ¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1 cup ½&1/2
Milk
Salt, ground sage, ground fennel and ground red pepper (cayenne) to taste.
2-3 TBSP cold butter
Set a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat and heat the oil on medium. Add the bacon and sauté until the fat is rendered and bacon is crisp. Remove bacon from the pan, but not the fat. Increase the heat to med-hi and add hunks of the sausage. Brown the sausage, breaking it up with a spatula, until it is loose and no longer pink, approximately 10 minutes. Add ground sage, fennel, a pinch of cayenne and black pepper to taste (I usually add in about a tablespoon of each at this point and adjust it later, if needed).
Reduce the heat to medium. Sprinkle the flour (add more if all the fat is not absorbed) over the sausage (or remove sausage from pan and add the flour directly to the fat) and cook, stirring constantly, until the flour has been absorbed by the fat, approximately 3-5 minutes. Do not allow the flour to burn. If you’ve added too much flour for the fat to absorb, add some butter to increase the fat.
Reduce heat to med-low. Return the bacon (and sausage, if removed) to the pan. Slowly stir in the ½&1/2 with a whisk, dissolving any flour lumps. Add about a cup of milk and cook at a bare simmer until the gravy starts getting thick. Gradually add additional milk and continue to stir. If it is too thick for your liking add more milk and stir. Add several tablespoons of cold butter and stir until melted. Remove from the heat when desired consistency is reached. Check and adjust seasonings (salt if necessary) and serve over split or roughly crumbled biscuits. Serves 6 to 8.
Sounds pretty damn Southern Chefguy.
Don’t think so, but it’s out-fucking-standing.
I know it’s not a classic roux, and all the snobs talk bad about it, but to save time, it’s way easier and faster to use a slurry.
Put a ratio of two tablespoons flour and 1 cup cold milk (colder the better) in a sealable container.
Shake it up
Pour it into the pan of hot browned sausage and grease.
Add a bunch of pepper, and maybe a little red pepper.
Bring it back to a boil stirring with a spatula.
When it starts boiling remover it from the heat.
It’s fast, it’s convenient, and it only uses one pan.
A slurry works well for thickening soups or stews, not usually quite so well for gravy. Dumping it into a pan of hot food would help cook the flour somewhat, though.
Chefguy, are you adding the butter at the end to try and thicken it further? Because that won’t really work unless you’re working with significantly less viscosity. If you’re just looking for richness, it may be easier to add it just before the flour.
Your recipe is pretty southern. Most people down here wouldn’t add extra thyme, since it’s usually already in the sausage. Otherwise, the basic technique is exactly the same. It’s all a variation on a bechamel.
You meant sage, of course, not thyme. I love the heavier sage flavor, but YMMV, and my amounts are deliberately vague for that reason. I add the butter at the end to give it a bit of smoothness and richness, not for thickening. Can’t remember where I learned that trick, but it seems to work. There’s never a problem with thickening with gravy that’s properly made. If anything, it will over thicken and need to be thinned, if one isn’t careful.
Looking at the recipe now, I would also recommend leaving the salt out of it until you taste the final product, or perhaps add at table along with more pepper. With bacon and sausage both in there, it would be easy to overdo it.