Sausage Gravy

Biscuits and gravy is one of my favorite foods (known as Bs and Gs in my family growing up).  For most of my life I didn't realize how easy the gravy was to make though because in my house we always used a sauce pack that was mixed with milk for the gravy.  It wasn't until I was watching an episodes of "Good Eats" while I was in college that I realized how easy sausage gravy was to make from scratch.

There are so few ingredients in this recipe that I'm not sure what was actually in the gravy pack that my parents used.  I only used about a quarter pound of sausage, but other then that I follow the above recipe pretty closely.

To make up for only using a quarter pound of sausage I do have to supplement the amount of fat in the pan after the sausage is cooked.  You could use vegetable oil, butter, lard, or bacon grease if you had it around.  The mixture of fat and flour is a roux  and extremely useful for thickening sauces and gravies.

You can cook the roux for as long as you want (it will get darker and darker shades of brown) but the longer you cook it the less thickening action it will provide.  I usually cook it for about five minutes over medium low heat until it starts to smell like cooked cereal.

The adding of the liquid to the roux always is a nervous time for me when making a sauce or gravy.  Often the sauce seems to thicken too quickly and become lumpy.  I have found though that continued whisking will remove the lumps as more liquid is added.  All I can tell you is that every time I've used a roux I thought at one point in the thickening process that I had ruined the sauce and every time it has recovered and turned out fine.  One key is that the roux and liquid should be at opposite ends of the temperature spectrum, but neither too extreme.  So one should be warm and the other cool.  In this case I turn the temperature of the roux down to low and let the milk sit on the counter a few minutes before adding it to the pan.

It is important to whisk or stir constantly through this process to incorporate the milk.  I also reserve a little milk to thin the gravy as it heats back up.  At this point you can add the sausage and any seasoning you want (I usually add Johnny's seasoning salt and black pepper.  I also cook the sausage in red pepper flake to add some spice).  I find the gravy is best when the sausage is allowed to sit in the sauce for ten minutes at least.

For this batch I used store bought biscuits (from a can) because they were cheap and easy but I will get around to documenting my biscuit making on here some time (I am still looking for the perfect recipe).