Cream gravy recipe

[RoyceP]

This stuff is good to serve with Chicken Fried Steak, or for breakfast with biscuits, or over fried chicken. This recipe makes a lot but you can cut it down to make what you need.


1 pound breakfast sausage
1/4 cup flour
3 cups milk
Season with salt and freshly ground pepper


Cook the sausage crumbled up. Pull the cooked sausage and reserve the grease. Make a roux with the flour and milk in a bowl. Add the roux to the hot grease. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the sausage back to the hot gravy. Enjoy!

[RoyceP]

Note that for a meal of 1/2 pound of chicken strips last night I cooked 1/4 pound of sausage with 1 1/2 cups of milk and 1/4 cup of flour. It was plenty of gravy!

[Delmonico]

Hint, put your flour in the pan and cook it with the sausage greasend sausage till slightly brown, that is a roux.  It has better flavor and then you can add the milk right to the pan and have less dishes to do.

[RoyceP]

I needed less flour and more milk the time I made it. The sausage went on a paper plate when it was done.

[Reverend P. Babcock Chase]

Howdy Royce,

Plus one for what Del said. Cooking the flour in the fat can actually brown the flour. The cajuns will do this until the flour and fat becomes a rich brown color. That adds a "nutty" flavor that is found in so many of their dishes. Browning the flour some will up the flavor. Just be sure to keep an eye on the roux, stirring a lot so it doesn't burn (that tastes bad and can't be saved).

Rev. Chase

[Major 2]

Yep + 2 for Del, I made some the other night...
I noted my sausage (Publix's store brand) was not all that greasy, must have grabbed lean.
  My cup of flour went in with crumbles same pot, and browned, 2 % milk was added later.
It was a bit loose at first but thickened up nicely.

I used store bought "crusty" Blaa rolls, in leu of making homemade biscuits.
    RoyceP   how was the paper plate & Gravy ?   

[Delmonico]

Wife has been wanting it and got me the whole milk.  Won't do gravy with any less.  Sausage was some of that newer stuff that was too lean, added bacon drippings. 

If making with cornstarch either this cream gravy or whatever you call it or the kettle gravy from broth you do not brown the cornstarch and use half as much as flour.  If using flour for kettle gravy I brown the flour in a pan or oven before adding.  In fact I often have a jar of browned flour handy.  The so called instant flour you sometimes see for making gravy is just browned flour.

Biscuits are an example of my telling people when buying, easy to cook a little in a big one than a lot in a small one.   Plenty others available but these two were out and handy.  I have another of each plus about 40 other pieces in the kitchen.

[RoyceP]

    RoyceP   how was the paper plate & Gravy ?   

It turned out great. I probably used a cup of milk, the flour made it super thick. I recovered though. A lot of black pepper got added because I just like it.

[Major 2]

Del, I like mine some thicker more like pudding than gravy.
 
   I also like a touch of Tabasco or Texas Pete on it, course If I have eggs with, they get a sprinkle of hot sauce too.

[Delmonico]

Del, I like mine some thicker more like pudding than gravy.
 
   I also like a touch of Tabasco or Texas Pete on it, course If I have eggs with, they get a sprinkle of hot sauce too.

Per the book.

Cream/Milk Gravy aka White Gravy



This is a flour/milk based gravy that is also called cream gravy, sawmill gravy, bulldog gravy or just country gravy and perhaps others I don't know. This is the gravy made out of country sausage and served over biscuits. In truth, this is just a variation of white sauce/Bechamel sauce in which the roux is made in the left over fat from frying meat and is often made after pan frying chicken.

Cream gravy is made with a roux and perhaps the first thing to explain is what a roux is, well to make it simple it is the French word for flour cooked in oil or grease, as a 50-50 mix. The cooking gets rid of the raw flour taste and if browned it adds flavor and color to our sauce/gravy. It needs to be a 50-50 mix or slightly more fat or you end up with lumps.

As to how much roux to roux that depends on how thick we want it. 1 tablespoon of flour per cup of milk will make a thin gravy, three per cup will make a very thick gravy, most will want to stay in the middle at two tablespoons.

Taking the middle road and making our gravy not real thick and not real thin and using equal amounts of grease, here is a simple chart:

1 cup milk to 2 tablespoons roux.
1 pint milk to 4 tablespoons roux or ¼ cup.
1 quart milk to 8 tablespoons roux or ½ cup.
½ gallon milk to 16 tablespoons roux or 1 cup.
1 gallon of milk to 32 tablespoons roux or 2 cups.

Of course if you want it thinner you can reduce it by up to half or completely double it to make thicker. Practice will let you know what you want exactly and can fine tune it.

There is one thing I'd like to mention before getting into the nuts and bolts of how to build the gravy. The milk should be whole milk, I know, some are just shocked that I would say that, but notice up above I mentioned you have to have enough fat to keep the gravy from getting lumpy? Yeah, so if you reduce the fat in the milk you will have to make it up anyway. Also unsweetened canned milk makes good gravy.

If using the drippings from making chicken fried steak, there likely will be enough grease to make a proper roux. When making sausage gravy, there maybe, or not. If I end up using sausage made in a large packing house aka National or Regional brand there usually is, sometimes far more than needed. I most times use sausage that is made in small town locker plants or behind the meat counter of my local owned store. This often needs lard added to it to make gravy, I'm not complaining though, because that means it's good quality.

Oven size is not critical on this, just make sure it's big enough, the deep making it easy to work the gravy as it cooks with out slopping over.

Besides the oven we need something to stir the gravy with, a whip works fine but I've come to prefer the heavy wire type potato masher, these work a lot better when you are dealing with a gallon or more of gravy.

Use the chart I provided to decide the size, this works well in a 12 inch deep.

Serves 8 more or less

[Delmonico]

Since we don't want no whopping biscuits out of a tube for our gravy.   Set up for dutch ovens but can be baked in a regular oven.


Baking Powder Biscuits
(And Similar Quick Breads Including Fry Bread)

A common and quick camp bread, plus the basic recipe can be baked as a flat loaf for Pan de Campo, a taller loaf is often called Bannock in Canada or Damper in Australia. Make it flat and round and cut it into triangles and call it scones or use a pan that makes triangles.

This can also be flattened out and made into fry bread, recipes vary as to tribal affiliation and region, but most are just a variation of this.

Biscuits, like most baking in dutch ovens, work best in the shallow oven.
10 inch shallow oven
Makes 8-12 biscuits depending on size 2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt
OR
2 cups self-rising flour

3/4 teaspoon to 3/4 tablespoon of sugar (optional)
2tablespoons of lard/bacon fat OR 3 tablespoons of butter or vegetable shortening
¾ cup of milk (more or less)
1/3rd teaspoon vinegar ( any kind and optional)
For 12 inch shallow dutch oven Makes 12-16 biscuits depending on size 3 cups flour
3teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt
OR
3 cups self-rising flour

1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of sugar (optional)

3 tablespoons of lard/bacon fat OR 4 tablespoons of butter or vegetable shortening
1 cup cup of milk (more or less)
½ teaspoon vinegar ( any kind and optional)

14 inch shallow oven
Makes 15-25 biscuits depending on size 5 cups flour
5 teaspoons baking powder 3 teaspoon salt
OR
5 cups self-rising flour

3 teaspoons to 3 tablespoon of sugar (optional)
5 tablespoons of lard/bacon fat OR 8 tablespoons of butter or vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cup of milk (more or less)
1 teaspoon vinegar ( any kind and optional)

16 inch oven
Makes 25-35 biscuits depending on size 8 cups flour
8 teaspoons baking powder 5 teaspoon salt
OR
8 cups self-rising flour

5 teaspoon to 5 tablespoon of sugar (optional)
8 tablespoons of lard/bacon fat OR 10 tablespoons of butter or vegetable shortening
2 cup of milk (more or less)
1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar (any kind and optional)

Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the butter/lard. Add vinegar, then the milk, and stir with hand, just enough to mix well, adding a bit more milk or flour to get slightly sticky soft dough. (If using canned milk and the can is empty, just add a bit more water.) Working it beyond what is needed with toughen the final product, stir as little as possible.

The vinegar is not there for taste, it won't be noticed, it's to keep the gluten from forming long strands that toughen the biscuit, the same thing is often done with pie crust.

Cut Biscuits: Roll the dough or flatten with your hands to between
½ inch to 1 inch thick, cut the desired size with either a biscuit cutter or an empty can. Place on the bottom of the oven and bake 10-15 minutes or till golden brown at 425-450F.

Cathead Biscuits: A common old west term for a biscuit formed with the hand instead of rolled and cut, often bigger and thicker than a cut one, hence the term, depending on the size, these will need to bake longer than the smaller cut biscuits.

Drop Biscuits: Use the above recipe but increase the milk by about 25% to make a wet dough. Use a tablespoon, fill it to heaping with the softer dough and drop them in the bottom of the oven and bake as above. These also tend to be thicker and need a little extra baking time over a thinner cut biscuit.

Once we decide on the method, we are going to used to form
our biscuits, then we need to have our dutch oven ready and lightly greased. As the biscuits are formed, we, just add them to the dutch oven we will be using, some like to preheat the oven, I don't.

Most recipes will say to bake biscuits around 425F or even 450F. This is fine if you are good at regulating the heat and there are not distractions. (One must remember those charts for charcoal are still only a guide.) By dropping down to the 350F-375F or our
medium oven range, it will take longer to bake but the chances of burning the bottom is less. Almost every time that foods
are burned in a dutch oven it is on the bottom. The bottom heat is not as forgiving as top and when trying to run the higher heats, the 1/3rd on the bottom is often too hot. If you want to run at a higher heat to finish faster, the method I mentioned above when you get

bottom heat and put it on a warm, dry spot works great. the bottom up to temperature and then remove the oven from the coals.