Sausage Gravy Recipe

While debate rages in my family on Thanksgiving biscuits—my Dad and stepmother fiercely defend my garlic and cheddar drop biscuits, while my Mom sides with the buttermilk biscuits—there's no doubt these buttery towers of awesomeness will be on our holiday dinner table. There's also little doubt I'll make twice as many as needed, so I can stuff my face the following mornings (days, and nights) with even more biscuits. Usually these are just popped in the toaster and then spread with honey butter, but I was thinking that while I'm displaying a total disregard for health and weight, why not go the extra mile and pile on sausage gravy?

Sausage gravy is so easy that it's hard to fathom how many bad ones I've had to endure over the years. If you have breakfast sausage, flour, milk, and a watchful eye, this gravy should be successful every time.

It's a standard béchamel—milk thickened with roux—but with butter subbed out by the drippings left from cooked breakfast sausage that's added back into the gravy at the end. If I'm not using my homemade spicy herbed breakfast sausage, I like to add a little extra sage and crushed red pepper into the gravy to enhance the flavor.

This thick, hearty, and meaty gravy is perfectly fit to satisfy a stomach enlarged by a Thanksgiving feast, and provides the next step in the expedited changeover to a holiday-season diet whose sole purpose seems to be the quick addition of natural "insulation" to protect against the impending cold (or at least that's how I like to justify my expanding waistline).