This was a staple in my house growing up in the South. It’s basically a gravy made with milk verses broth. And the fat is from sausage or bacon. It’s really all in what pan you use and how you do it.

Now that I have learned how to eat healthy I still make it but only once in a while and I only use fresh humanely raised pork sausage without preservatives or bacon. Sometimes I have used chicken sausage but I have to use more seasoning. I’ve also substituted avocado oil for the fat and used spelt flour or whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose. It changes the taste and texture but it’s still very good gravy.

Let’s make gravy

First, you need to fry out the bacon or sausage in an iron skillet. You can use another pan but it’s best done in an iron one. Use 1/2 to 1 pound sausage or bacon.

Once your meat is very well cooked remove it from the pan if you used bacon, if you used sausage leave it in the pan unless you are not eating the sausage with the gravy, reserve the fat in the pan.

Pour out 2 cups of milk and set aside. Adjust the heat to med-low and Begin scraping up all the crunchy stuff from the bottom of the skillet. This is one of the reasons I wanted you to use an iron skillet if at all possible because you’ll end up with more crunchies and you won’t ruin a non-stick pan, which is probably the worst to try and make gravy in.

Now add about 4 TB all purpose flour to the reserved fat. Take the pan off the burner and stir the flour into the drippings until smooth. You can use a whisk if you need to. If it doesn’t appear that you’ve added enough flour, go ahead and add a teaspoon at a time, stirring it in after each addition until you have a medium slurry. With the pan still off the heat, add one cup of your milk which should be room temperature by now and using your whisk. Stir it into your slurry until smooth. Now, place the pan back on the heat and as it starts to warm up and gently bubble slowly add the remaining milk, whisking it in as you pour until smooth. Nows when you add salt and pepper to taste. Adjust the temperature down to low if you need to and allow the gravy to slowly cook and thicken, it will bubble up and you can keep stirring it a little at a time until it thickens to your desired consistency. Take the pan off the heat and cover until ready to serve. If you used bacon, you can crumble your bacon up and stir it in now.

A little side note, sometimes the gravy will thicken quite a bit while it sits if you don’t serve it right away. So if that happens, put it back on the burner on low and start to stir it while adding just a tiny bit of milk at a time until you achieve that same desired consistency that you did before.

Enjoy!