There is no greater Southern food tradition than an over-the-top, unhealthy as possible, weekend breakfast feast with everything from applewood smoked bacon to zebra cakes! While most enjoy eggs, bacon, and other simple breakfast foods, biscuits are a must-have staple and unless they are coated with butter or icing of some sort require a mega scoop of sausage gravy. Today's recipe, Ultimate Sausage Gravy, is a throwback to my youth in the hills of eastern Tennessee where biscuits and gravy were synonymous with family breakfast! It's a standard white gravy with pork sausage bits that tastes great on everything, not just biscuits, so we will stick with the gravy talk and I'll let you do your own biscuit-making in this blog...Let's Get Cooking!
You can't make the Ultimate Sausage Gravy without sausage so begin by browning some pork sausage over Medium-High heat until no longer pink and almost completely cooked through. You can use a standard breakfast sausage, sausage patties, or just generic pork sausage, but refrain from using anything in a casing. You can break up or cut the patties into smaller crumbles like the regular sausage will as you cook it, but anything cased is just a pain to go back and break up into small enough bits. One bonus of using breakfast sausage patties is that you can make extra just to enjoy on their own if you don't plan on making any bacon, but we all know that goes against a true Southern breakfast so you're better off just making both! I digress, but I went with a generic pork sausage for the batch I made for this blog.
Once your pork is cooked to your preference, add the butter and stir until melted. We are using the butter and grease from the sausage to form a bit of a roux so DO NOT drain any excess grease. This gravy is meant to be Heart Harmful and delicious so leave the grease! Sprinkle some AP Flour over that greasy pork and melted butter and stir everything together. The flour should just about absorb all the extra oils in the pan, but I prefer my sausage a bit crispy for some added texture so I let mine keep cooking until it formed a nice brown crust.
Once the flour has combined with the excess grease, slowly pour in the milk as you continually whisk to prevent any clumping. Keep stirring until all the milk has been added and whisked in for about 3 minutes. The gravy will still be a little on the "loose" side for now so don't panic just yet.
As it continues to cook and that roux we made starts to tighten up the gravy, add the granulated garlic, seasoning salt, regular salt, and a hefty amount of black pepper. If you used breakfast sausage, you will want to taste your gravy before adding any seasoning as that pork was already seasoned. The garlic and pepper are fine, but the seasoning salt and regular salt additions are meant for everyone that used plain ground pork sausage. Stir in the seasonings and allow the gravy to finish cooking an additional 5 minutes or so until it thickens to your liking.
In less than 20 minutes you have just made the Ultimate Sausage Gravy enjoyed throughout the South! Like I mentioned earlier, this is amazing served over some fresh, warm biscuits, but also great with your eggs or toast. It is definitely high calorie/high fat so unless you want to end up on TLC's "My 600lb Life" I suggest limiting your portion size, but every once in a while, it's okay to be a bit of a glutton and put your heart and veins through a good workout with this Ultimate Sausage Gravy! It's stick-to-your-bones good and will make any breakfast ten times better so get in the kitchen and make this one for your next big weekend breakfast feast...Just Keep Cooking!
ULTIMATE SAUSAGE GRAVY
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