Howdy partners.
Welcome to another episode of Hilah Cooking.
I'm Hilah.
Today, I'm going to show you how to make gravy.
I'm not going to talk like that the whole time, though.
A lot of people asked how to make gravy.
We made biscuits a while back, and that was a
fun episode.
Then everyone's all like, "I need gravy to put on my biscuits.
This is BS, Hilah."
Today, I'm going to show you how to make sausage gravy,
something my dad used to make when I was a kid.
I remember when I was this tall, being all like, "How do
I make gravy?"
Then he told me, and now I'm going to tell you.
Giddy up.
Gravy requires 3 ingredients: Milk, flour, and some kind of fat.
If you want to do a vegetarian gravy, you can use
butter or even oil.
I'm going to use sausage.
I cooked the sausage, and then used the sausage grease to make
my gravy.
That's how I do.
First thing you do is cook some sausage.
I'm probably just going to use half of this because
I am like a bear in the winter, in that I start to get fat.
I'm trying to minimize the fat-getting over the winter so I can continue to please
you visually.
Sorry.
Idiot.
I'm just going to start breaking this up.
If you wanted to fry slices and then remove them, and then just keep the grease
to make your gravy and just have sausage patties and gravy; you can do
that too, but whatever.
Let's just try to make this easy, OK?
Let's not try to make breakfast-making any harder than it has to be.
Whenever I make gravy, I think about this song,
and it goes like this:
It's a wakin' bacon, making-bacon, morning.
It's a waking bacon, making-bacon day.
Jacqueline's in the kitchen frying bacon, Me, I'm sitting rolling up with Jay.
Daddy's standing there, he's doing nothing, Looking like he needs something to do.
It's a wakin' bacon, making-bacon morning.
I'm feeling fine.
How are you?
I'm feeling fine.
How are you?
My husband wrote that song.
I think it's funny.
A good ratio to start with is 1 tablespoon of fat, 1 tablespoon of flour,
and then 1 cup of milk.
Everybody knows that a cup of gravy ain't enough,
so I usually do 2-2-2.
If you're using butter, butter has a higher water
content, obviously, than pure fat, so you might want to do 2 tablespoons of
butter, 1 tablespoon of flour.
Like that, so you still end up with a proportionate amount of fat.
You know what, butter?
Oil's right here.
I'm going to use oil.
I'm going to add maybe 1 tablespoon.
That's looking more like I could make some gravy out of this.
I turned my heat down to medium-high a little bit ago.
We're just about to the point where we're going to add a couple
tablespoons of flour.
I could take the sausage out.
I probably should.
Dang it, I will.
God, y'all are always on my case.
I'm going to pull it out and leave all of the grease
that I possibly can.
I'm going to use this burned-up-ass slotted spoon,
actually, because I want that grease.
I'm going to use that to make my roux, which is what you make to thicken gravies
and sauces.
Set that aside, and then take a look at how much oil you have
left.
This is not enough to make any decent gravy, so I'm going to add
some oil.
You could add butter, you could add bacon fat, or you could just
buy man sausage that has a lot of fat in it.
Sorry.
You get this warm.
Then I have here a couple tablespoons of flour that I'm
going to sprinkle in, and it foams up a little.
Now I'm going to bust out the old whisk
and get this incorporated.
It gets real thick, like that.
This is what you call . . . this is the roux; it's spelled, R-O-U-X, it's
just flour and fat that you cook together and it acts as a thickening agent
for gravies; same thing when you make a lot of Cajun food, creoles and
stuff.
You can cook it to whatever color you like, but you want to cook it
for at least a minute or so, just so that the flour actually gets cooked
and doesn't taste raw.
You can get up all those little crispy bits.
Now I'm going to add in some milk.
Like I said, I did 2 cups of flour, so probably about 2 cups of milk.
Gravy ain't a fuckin' science.
You just add milk until it looks thick enough for you.
You do want to add it just a little bit at a time so you can make sure
to get out any lumps before they harden up and become hard to get out.
If you just keep whisking it, they get out of there.
This is really the reason why I took the sausage out, was
just so that it would be easier for me to differentiate flour lumps from
sausage lumps.
You can see it's getting a lot looser now.
I'm going to add the rest of this; this was about 1 1/2 cup.
Just keep whisking after each addition to get
out any lumps.
If you add too much milk like I possibly just did, just let
it cook a little bit longer.
I'm going to turn the heat up a little.
Now is a good time to add some salt and pepper.
There's some pepper.
If I had used bacon fat, I might not want to add so much
salt because it's already pretty salty, but just a little bit.
A little bit of salt never hurt anybody.
Wait, totally did.
This is all smooth and delightful.
It's a little thin, so I'm going to turn the heat up and let it thicken a little bit.
I'm also going to go ahead and just add my sausage in so that it can release
more of its delicious sausageyness into my gravy.
Carefully, so I don't spill gravy and waste any
gravy or burn the stuff out of myself.
This is going to be good on biscuits, which are in the oven as we speak.
Scraping the bottom so it's not sticking.
This is getting almost as thick as I like it.
Like I said, this is not a science, this is a lot about
personal preference.
This looks good.
When it starts to thicken up at the end, it starts to thicken up quick.
This looks real good to me.
Perfect consistency.
Let's have biscuits and gravy y'all.
I got these biscuits that I made.
They cooked a little long because we had them in the oven while we were making the
gravy.
You get the idea, right?
I'm going to split them because that's how you're supposed to do it in my
house, and then I'm going to put some delicious sausage gravy on them.
Dang it; smells good.
I'm going to eat some biscuits and gravy now.
Look out y'all.
I wish I hadn't overcooked these damn biscuits.
Oh, my God, they're like crackers.
Shit.
The gravy is good, man, though.
Cool.
That's how you make gravy.
What's awesome about knowing how to make gravy is that means
you can also make any . . . any time it calls for white sauce; that's
basically what we just made except leave out the sausage.
It's like a bunch of birds with one stone, man.
Check out the website, HilahCooking.com, and I will post this recipe.
There are also lots of other hilarious and awesome
things on there.
Check that out.
I will see you next time on, Hilah Cooking.