First of all, fry your meat. For the sausage gravy, I usually use a pound of sausage, but when I was making it for everyone while I was there, I used 2 pounds.
Make sure that you give the meat enough time to brown fairly nicely, it will improve the flavor of the gravy. If you’re making sausage gravy, you don’t remove the meat while you make the gravy. Go ahead and get about a fourth of a cup of flour for each pound of sausage that you use and sprinkle it over the cooked meat that is still in the frying pan.
Stirring well, make sure you incorporate everything from the bottom of the pan. The heat should still be on at this point, you are going to cook it long enough that you lose that flour taste from the uncooked flour. (3 to five minutes or so.) So stir well, scraping the bottom of the pan almost constantly. Once the flour/meat mixture is decently brown, put in about a half a cup of water. Although you can skip this step, I like to use a half a cup of water at the very beginning so that I don’t scorch whatever dairy product I’m using.
You will notice that the water will be absorbed by the meat mixture very quickly and the whole thing will get a little bit pasty. That’s what you’re looking for. At this point, go ahead and add whatever dairy product you intend to use. When I’m making sausage gravy to use on biscuits, I normally use half-and-half. If you don’t have any half-and-half, you can also use milk. It won’t be as rich, but it will still be delicious. You can also use cream plus milk (which is exactly what half and half is.)
For 1 pound of sausage, you will use anywhere between 2 cups and 3 cups of dairy. Keep cooking this mixture until it thickens up, depending on how cold the milk is it could take up to five minutes, but probably not that long.
Make sure you stir it the whole time and continue to scrape up anything from the bottom and sides of the pan so it doesn’t get scorched. Once it’s the thickness you want, turn off the stove and keep stirring it for a few moments. Get a spoon to taste. This mixture will absolutely need seasoning. I use salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Don’t go too crazy with the garlic because it will take over the whole dish and it won’t be what you’re looking for.
I use the same technique when I’m making pork chop gravy. I dredge the pork chops and flour and set them in a pan that already has hot oil in it. I season each side of the pork chop as it’s cooking, and when it’s brown on both sides, I will set the pork chops in a separate baking dish. Once all the pork chops are brown, add about half to 3/4 cup water (to prevent the pork chops from drying out), cover the baking dish with a lid or foil and put it in the oven. Bake the meat until it finishes cooking, somewhere between a half hour and an hour, depending on how many pork chops you’ve cooked.
Once the pork chops are done, remove the baking dish from the oven and peel the foil back. Any juices that were released from the pork chops while they were in the oven should be added to the pan that you used to brown the pork chops. Once the oven is off and you’ve added the cooking juices to your frying oan, you can put the pork chops back in the oven to stay warm.
Turn on the stove under the frying pan and heat up the drippings. Once they’re sizzling, add flour and make the gravy the same way you do for sausage gravy.
By the way, when I was a kid, sometimes we would make hamburger gravy instead of sausage gravy. I don’t think it’s as good, but it’s easy, it’s a cheap meal, and it’s nice to serve over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes. Just an FYI.
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