In the South, cream gravy is made with milk. I don't make the rules. This gravy is made for biscuits.
Ingredients
- 1 lb. country sausage
- ½ cup salted butter
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 5 cups whole milk
- 2 tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. fresh finely ground black pepper
Instructions
In a large pot (e.g. an enameled dutch oven or deep sauté pot, something with at least a 10" base) over medium heat, cook and crumble the sausage until just a little pink remains. Add the butter and stir until melted.
Add the flour and stir into the buttery sausage until its thouroughly mixed into the butter. Cook until the flour just starts to darken, about 5 minutes, stirring constantly and scraping cooked flour off the botton of the pan as needed.
Turn the heat up to medium-high. Briefly remove the pot from the burner to somewhere stable (for example another burner not in use). Add a first cup of milk to the sausage roux, whisking it in vigorously until a thick, smooth paste forms. Add the remaining milk one cup at a time, whisking with each added cup until the liquid is completely smooth. After the 5th cup of milk, it will be runny. Trust the process.
Return the pot to the burner. Add the salt and pepper. Stirring frequently, heat the liquid until it just starts to bubble. This might take as long as 10 minutes. Immediately turn the heat to low and continue to stir frequently. Once the gravy has thickened, keep warm and stir occasionally as long as folks are serving themselves.
Serve over biscuits or anywhere else gravy makes you happy.
Ideas & Tips
- Removing the pot from the heat when you add the milk goes a long way toward preventing clumps
- If you are using an electric burner, you might need to remove the pot from the heat once it bubbles while the burner cools down some
- There are those in the South that decry the use of a whisk when making cream gravy; they are to be ignored
- Sweet tea was the drink of choice growing up to go with biscuits and gravy; again, I don't make the rules
Iterations
- 2022-10-09: First added to the site, but I have made this recipe hundreds of times over the last three decades.
Drew Miller