Sausage Gravy with Biscuits and Poached Eggs

Biscuits and Gravy is my favorite item on the breakfast menu!

When I moved South, my husband's Aunt Frances showed me how to make sausage gravy, and this is her recipe. She was born in Appalachian East Tennessee during the Great Depression.They lived off the land, raising hogs and slaughtering them each fall. To preserve the meat through the winter, they would smoke some and turn some into sausage that they packed into jars and kept in the outdoor cold cellar.

As I watched her make sausage gravy, she told me that back then, their sausage had more fat in it. What you buy in the grocery store today is quite lean in comparison. She's had to modify her recipe over the years to include bacon grease as a replacement. (You do save your bacon drippings, right?)

Frances makes a brown gravy, which means she lets the flour in (what I would call) her roux brown before adding the milk. This will give it more flavor. I make mine a little less brown because I get impatient and I like my gravy and biscuits to be done at the same time. You can adjust to fit your taste.

Serve your gravy any way you like, but I take mine with a biscuit and a poached egg. If you want to serve bacon or sausage patties as well, cook those first and reserve the grease. Start your gravy in the same skillet.

Serves 4-6

First I make up my biscuits using White Lily self-rising flour and the recipe on the back of the bag. I cook mine in a 10-inch cast iron skillet with 4 T. of butter melted in the bottom and brushed on top. Once I put them in the oven to cook (for 25-30 minutes), I start the gravy.

1/2 lb. ground breakfast sausage

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. sugar

1/4 t. ground black pepper

1-2 T. bacon grease

1/2 cup flour

3 cups milk

In a large, cast-iron or deep non-stick skillet, brown your sausage over medium heat. Add salt, sugar and pepper and stir in. Add flour and stir to coat the sausage. If there's not enough grease in the pan to absorb all the flour, add 1/2 T. of bacon grease at a time until you see no more raw white flour. 

For a more brown (and flavorful) gravy, continue cooking sausage for 10 more minutes to brown the flour in the hot grease. Once it has reached your desired brownness, add milk 1/2 cup at a time and stir until a paste forms. Then add more milk until you've used all 3 cups. It may seem thin enough without all the milk, but trust me, it will continue to thicken!

While gravy is thickening, poach your eggs in boiling water (3 minutes for light, 4 for medium, and 5 for hard). Layer biscuit, egg, gravy, then enjoy.