CREAMY SAUSAGE
GRAVY
White sauce, as classic French béchamel is known in the
United States, is basically nothing more than milk that has
been thickened with flour. There are a couple keys to
making good white sauce: the first is to make sure that the
flour is cooked. Raw flour tastes, well, raw. You want to
cook the flour in butter until its raw aroma goes away
and it takes on a very light golden color. After that, it’s
just a matter of slowly whisking in the milk. The more
slowly you whisk it in, the smoother your sauce will be. As
your white sauce heats, starch granules in the flour—
which are like tiny water balloons filled with starch
molecules—slowly absorb water from the milk, swelling
up and eventually bursting, releasing starch molecules
into the liquid. These starch molecules cross-link,
thickening your sauce. White sauces need to be brought to
a near boil to thicken fully.
Creamy sausage gravy is as simple as frying some good
breakfast sausage (such as the kind you make yourself),
then making a white sauce around it. I like mine nice and
peppery. Serve immediately, on top of buttermilk or other
savory biscuits.