Gravy is something I cannot nail down. I don’t think I’m patient enough.
So, I bought some breakfast sausage links. Cook a few as normal, then maybe break some ground out of the casing and brown. Then add water and flour to thicken/roux? Add pepper? This is my intuition, but I really have no idea what’s right/wrong.
I was taught to use milk rather than water, but that’s basically right. Butter doesn’t hurt either if you’re making it without cooking sausage first, but the sausage might have enough fat on its own.
Close. You don’t add liquid and flour. You brown the meat, and render out fat. It’s vital to have a couple tablespoons of liquid fat in the pan. If you don’t get enough from the sausage, augment with a bit of butter or oil. Heat around medium.
Then sprinkle in flour, about equal in volume to the liquid fat, and stir. You gently fry the flour in the oil to cook off the raw flour flavor. It’ll go from white to about sand color. If your proportions are right it will look a bit like wet sand, and will smell like roasted nuts a bit.
Now slowly stir in cold milk while whisking gently to mix and prevent lumps. Scrape the bottom to deglaze any browned on flecks of meat. You want to heat it to just bubbling not to scorch the milk. It’ll thicken up.
Then grind a bunch of pepper in to finish it off, and pour over biscuits, fried taters, or whatever.
All gravy works this way, pretty much. Gravy for turkey? Replace the milk with poultry stock. Gravy for steak? Beef stock it is.
I cheat when im making gumbo. i toast like 2 cups of flour in a dry pan over low heat till it’s dark tan, and then add a cup of bacon fat and fry for a few minutes, instant roux, and then start introducing the stock. this way i don;t stir a roux for an hour.
Good quality ground breakfast sausage, flour, milk, fresh sage.
Get the sausage good and brown and then add enough flour to the sausage to soak up the fat. Let that flour sit in the heat for a few minutes, stirring every so often, get it a little browned. Slowly add milk while stirring and scraping the stuck on flour off the pan. Add milk to desired thickness. FYI the gravy will gradually thicken over ~5 mins so let it sit for a bit before serving to make sure you’re at the right consistency. When you add the milk, toss in a few hearty pinches of fresh sage. Enjoy!
A roux is fat (or oil or butter) and flour, not water and flour. You can add water-based liquids (water, stock, wine, etc.) to thin it out later, but the starches need to be coated in the lipids first.
If you try to do it the other way around (adding flour and water first and then fat afterward) the flour clumps up and you just get greasy dough balls.
“american style gravy” is a straight up fast roux. you fry the flour in the grease, and then add cream to make white gravy or stock if your family is lactose intolerant, whisk the hell out of it, pour over baking soda bicuits or fry bread, but just before, you crumble the base meat/sausage/bacon, back into the roux.
I prefer jimmy dean sage sausage, but any breakfast sausage (ground, not links) should work. Water won’t work, you need to use milk. I also like to add butter to the pan before adding the milk.
Is that how it’s supposed to be? I have had many customers drag me out to breakfast claiming to have the best biscuits and gravy, and it’s always the same tasteless crap. My family in America have too. Are they all just THAT basic?
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