Southern Sausage Gravy

This gravy was taught to my dad by his grandmother when he was a little boy. He loved being in the kitchen with Ma. She was a dumpling of a woman who was ready to make anything you wanted to eat if she thought you were hungry. She taught me that dessert could be eaten whenever since why should you wait until the end when you would be too stuffed to eat it then!

Ingredients:

1 pound bulk pork sausage

4 tablespoons butter*

8 tablespoons all-purpose flour

8 cups whole milk

3 teaspoons salt*

3 teaspoons pepper*

1 teaspoon Crushed red pepper*

Directions:

In a fry pan break up the sausage. Fry on medium until the sausage is no longer pink and is in bite size chunks. Take care not to burn the sausage with too high of heat. Take the sausage out of the pan and place on a plate that has paper towels on it to drain. Pour off most of the sausage grease. Leaving about a tablespoon of grease in the pan. Now add the butter. When the butter is melted stir in the all-purpose flour. Cook this mixture until it is a golden brown. Add the milk slowly using a wire whisk to beat it into the flour mixture and to keep lumps from forming. Once the mixture starts to thicken add the last three ingredients. Then add the drained sausage.

Makes 8 cups.

*Notes:

We use real butter and not margarine. Also we have just used the sausage grease with no butter.

The salt, pepper and crushed red peppers are to your tastes. Everyone has their own preferred taste level so do it to yours.

This will keep up to a week in the fridge or can be frozen for a month. We never freeze it since it does not last long with everyone wanting it for breakfast.