This
sausage country gravy recipe comes from a time before cooks tried to
think of ways to trim a few calories, but rather, thought of ways to
sneak more calories into a dish. This was a meal that was meant to fill
you up and keep you satisfied for a long time.
In
addition to the astronomically high calorie count, another advantage of
a milk gravy that’s been thickened with a roux made from the rendered
fat of meat scraps, is it’s very cheap. So, when you combine “cheap,”
with “filling,” and “delicious,” you have all the makings of a diner
classic, which this certainly is.
In
a diner, this gravy (also known as sausage gravy or cream gravy) would
be made with leftover cooked sausage links and other breakfast meat
scrapes like crumbled bacon, or ham ends. Since we’re making ours from
scratch, we have the advantage of all that freshly rendered fat to make
the light roux.
This
method is more authentic and flavorful, but admittedly does nothing to
improve the recipe’s dingy color and questionable appearance. Let’s face
it, some great recipes are just plain ugly and that’s the way it is. I
used a low fat milk, which makes for the dingiest color, but whole milk
or cream, if you want this extra rich, do look marginally better.
As
I mention in the video, if you’ve eaten this before, and know how
shockingly good it can be, the look of the dish never crosses your mind.
If this were a blind date, the recipe would be described as being
“really fun with an amazing personality.”