Morning · All year
Sausage Gravy
Pepper, milk, and the fat the sausage renders. Butter fills in if the pan runs short. No oil.
25 minutes · Serves 6 · About 4 cups, enough for 6 plates of biscuits
“They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts.”
Ingredients
- 1 lb plain pork breakfast sausage
- 3 tbsp butter, only if the sausage does not render enough fat
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- 3 cups whole milk
- 1 tsp fine salt, then more to taste
- 1 tsp black pepper, and many people want more
Method
- 1
Cook the sausage in a wide skillet over medium heat, breaking it up, until no pink remains. Tip the pan and look at the fat. You want about 1/4 cup. If the sausage was lean and you have less, add butter and let it melt. If you have a great pool of fat, spoon some off so 1/4 cup remains.
- 2
Sprinkle the flour over the sausage and fat. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes, until the flour smells cooked and the pan looks pasty. Do not rush this. Raw flour tastes like paste in the gravy.
- 3
Pour in the milk a little at a time, stirring, so no lump of flour survives. Bring it to a gentle simmer. Cook 5 to 8 minutes, stirring, until it coats a spoon. It will thicken more as it sits.
- 4
Salt and pepper it. Pepper is the point of this gravy. Thin it with a splash of milk if it gets too thick for the biscuit. Serve over split hot biscuits.
From the kitchen
- Use sausage that is meat and seasoning, not a patty bound with seed oil. The fat in the pan is the gravy’s fat.
- This is a breakfast, not a sauce for everything. Six people, a skillet of biscuits, and this pan is the meal.
My note
Kept on this device, beside the recipe, for the next time you cook it.
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