Hi! I am Betty. Welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. We’re going to make sausage and sausage gravy. I don’t need fatty foods that often, so I am calling this my Sunday Morning Sausage and Sausage gravy.

I’ve already gotten some frozen biscuits out. These are just generic of frozen biscuits. It don’t have to be a particular brand but they’re the kind that are already made and ready to bake. So, I am using every convenience possible. What I’ve done to prepare them and this isn’t necessarily on the back of the package but I like to put extra virgin olive oil a little bit on the top and the bottom of each. And I’ve put four in this pan. Just choose as many as you need and then, those will go into a 350-400° oven for about 20 minutes. So, keep checking them and make sure they’re the degree on doneness that you like.

Now, we come to the sausage. Now, I’ve chosen them already and I’ve taken off the ends here because they’re a little more trouble than the rest. I am going to use an electric knife to get this cut and the reason is that, sometimes if you just use a regular knife, it’s hard to get it to move through the sausage without crushing it. We want these to look nice. You need to start with chilled sausage. It needs to be very cold or else it will mush together and you’ll have incomplete circles. So, forgive me for the sound here. I’m just going to quickly try to cut this into slices. Here we go and this is one pound package and you can see that it made 10 complete slices and then there were two ends. I am going to use all of that.

And so, what I have is a hot skillet back here. It’s an iron skillet. I am going to place these in, touching one another and then, I will keep an eye on them as they cook because I want to let them cook until they need to turned and I’ll turn them one time and then let them cook on the other side but it is very important that they cook completely.

I’ll be back in a few minutes after this has progressed and let you know how we’re coming along.

These all look to be done now. So, what I am going to do is remove them to a plate that has a paper towel on it to do some draining. So, let me just bring that over and we’ll lift each one of this out. Actually, I will tell you that I did turn some other more than once because I was just checking to make sure that they were getting done. So, if you feel like you did to do that, don’t follow the rule that I gave earlier which said turn only once. Just make sure that they are completely done and you’ll see something about like this. They should be nice and brown. If they’re not, then you’re not going to be able to make your gravy. I see that’s beginning to smoke a little bit. It’s too hot, so I need to remove it from that heat or turn the heat off which really is not that to forget.

The sausage is done and I will be moving that to a serving plate in a few minutes but for now, I am just going to set this aside while I make the gravy. I am going to leave that on because I’ll be right back to it. I will pour off any excess grease and actually, there is very little here. Usually, I have some that will go into a container like this. I usually just save up containers and put them in a dishwasher if I open mayonnaise or spaghetti sauce or something like that but I always get rid of all of the grease and leave the pan drippings or the leavings from the sausage in there. What I am going to do is to add flour. This is ½ cup. I don’t know if I’ll need that all up. It usually go by just eye sight. Let’s say ¼ cup. I think using ½ of my ½ cup is plenty. So, I have ¼ cup right there and I am going to get a spoon to stir that with and this is going to look a little weird but what I do is add water. I had two cups there. Well, I’ve done to about one cup and then stir. I think it needs more water already. I want to make sure that I remove lots which it starts all lumpy, very lumpy and the water will allow you to mash out those lumps and get it to a point where it will eventually make smooth gravy. So, just stir that around, keep mashing the lumps. And I’m not going to commit myself on the amount of water yet because I may need to add more, another additive is going to be milk but I usually try to get the lumps out before I add the milk and you can see this nice brown color that is taking on, that’s what you’re going to expect if you leave all those drippings in the bottom. Remember, no grease. The old time way of making this is to just leave all the grease in there whether it’s a tablespoon or two tablespoons and then put the flour in and make sort of roux of it but I don’t like that extra grease and it is possible to get rid of it and it does not affect the flavor one bit but you have much of your gravy. You see, that is looking pretty nice and not very lumpy. If I had more time, I would on those lumps a little more but we need to move on.

So, what I am going to do is add some milk. I now have one cup sitting out here. I probably won’t need all that. I want to just do it by eyesight and make it easy for you, ½ cup. So, at this point we have ½ cup of milk added in and we’re on the way to using our two cups of water but we haven’t all of that. It depends on how this thickens up and it varies day to day, so I am going to give you some guidelines when I write up the recipe as to maybe I’ll say ¼ cup to ½ cup or I’ll say 1 ½ cups to 2 cups on the water but this returns to heat and reason it’s going to be bubbly and nice. This is a good time to add in the salt. I have ½ teaspoon of salt right here. I am just going to sprinkle that in. It does need salt and you might think that all of the flavors comes from the sausage that part of the flavor comes from saltiness. We want to continually stir and turn this up, so it will heat it or hurry it up just a little bit. You see it’s beginning to thicken and beginning to bubble. And this is the point where I add a little more water.

Basically, you need to cook this long enough for the flour to get done. And then it will be nice, country sausage gravy. I am going to work on that and I’ll be back to show you the final serving.

Well, our sausage gravy is done. So, let me turn that off. I ended up using one ¼ of flour on the drippings and then I used ½ cup of skim milk and I used 1 ½ cups of water. Yours may vary a little bit but this is ready, so I’m just going to pour it into the serving bowl. I am not going to take too long on this but you can see I removed all of the lumps and it’s nice, country sausage gravy. When I get ready to serve that, I’ve taken one of my biscuits and slice it open and then take maybe a couple of sausages over here. And then, drizzle some gravy over the biscuits. And then, with my apple juice or orange juice, whatever, a few or in segments in my cup of coffee, I am ready to do for Sunday morning.