Gravy's Cooking Thread
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Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Depending on volume and amount desired, you want to start with a couple of cups of either beef or pork stock. Get that liquid to a roil, and add some rosemary for flavor. Probably 1.5oz or roughly a full "sprig" with stem attached. Let that work for 5 minutes at a roil. Then add in -all- the drippings from sauteeing up your sausage along with the meat itself, and get it roiling. Whisk in milk and then start adding flour when it gets back to a roil. If you aren't adding butter, do so as it helps bind things together. Since you are defaulting at 4cups of milk, I will assume you are making 6+ cups of gravy overall. Add 3tsp of butter to your initial sautee to get it warm and intermixed with the sausage fats. Don't go unsalted; the idea here is flavor. Slowly add flour until you get to the consistency you want. Enjoy.
Pro-Tip: You can make a "roux" outside of each cooking attempt and just keep it fridged up and ready to go. Just take a lb or so of butter and melt it in a sauce pan. Then add flour until it has the consistency of damp sand, whisking/stirring constantly. Keep heating it until the entire mixture is sand-like, then kill the heat and let it cool. You can use this mixture to thicken up basically any cream/butter/milk based sauce and it won't effect the coloration negatively.
Pro-Tip: You can make a "roux" outside of each cooking attempt and just keep it fridged up and ready to go. Just take a lb or so of butter and melt it in a sauce pan. Then add flour until it has the consistency of damp sand, whisking/stirring constantly. Keep heating it until the entire mixture is sand-like, then kill the heat and let it cool. You can use this mixture to thicken up basically any cream/butter/milk based sauce and it won't effect the coloration negatively.
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I'm pretty sure I remember you working in the restaurant industry. But adding flour to water-based liquid is guaranteed to get clumps. It's like sauce thickening 101.
Also, why discard to fond from browning the meat? I like making sausage gravy in the same pan and just deglazing with whatever liquid.
Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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Mrs. Gravy
Quite Saucy
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Small reminder...don't rub your eyes when you just finished chopping a jalapeno....not that I just did that or anything.
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Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Mrs. Gravy
Quite Saucy
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Because you don't want your crotch to smell of delicious pineapple?
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Or to burn off from the huge amounts of acid. Besides, fruit juice gets sticky, and not in the good way.
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trex
Queen Bee
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Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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1-2 cups of stock reduced with rosemary for 5 minutes + the four cups of milk doesn't make a water based sauce really. It's still going to lean almost entirely towards a milk base, especially when brought back up to a roil. Also I mentioned pouring everything from the pan into the stock, though I suppose if you're using a pan that tends to stick a lot you would want to deglaze, which you could easily do by pouring a small amount of your heated stock into the pan and swirling it around before transferring. Not to mention that adding the grease from the sausage to your mixture will help bind the flour together in a similar fashion to using butter, and you'll already have a reasonable amount of butter in the liquid anyway.
But yeah, otherwise you're right. If it was primarily water vs. milk or cream, you'd probably want to use a corn starch slurry for thickening, or if it was more 50/50 you could easily get away with using a butter/flour slurry (thinner than a roux). If you are whisking the previously mentioned gravy mixture at a reasonable rate during a roil, slowly adding flour (in hindsight I should have clarified by using a dusting/sifting type addition, I would hope people aren't just tossing flour into things by the spoonfull/handfull, but it wasn't ultra clear when I said "slowly.") won't clump up. But if you have time, making the roux like I mentioned in my edit is superior. Again though, you don't want to just grab a chunk and fling it into the sauce. Break it up with your hand and crumble it into the pan/pot while whisking at a reasonable rate.