How To Make Sausage Gravy
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Learn how to make sausage gravy with 3 simple ingredients: milk, flour, and sausage. It’s so creamy and flavorful and best served over a fluffy homemade biscuit.
Today, we’re going to make a real Southern staple. This sausage gravy recipe is going to separate the men from the mice, as they say. Nothing beats fluffy homemade buttermilk biscuits smothered in homemade sausage gravy for breakfast on a special occasion (or just because). It’s Southern comfort food at its finest. The ingredients might be simple, but the flavor is anything but. The combination of milk, flour, sausage, and salt and pepper is deliciously creamy.
Don’t you just love simple recipes? That is one of the best things about Southern cooking. It’s just plain simple and just plain good. Always unnerves me when I see a recipe for sausage gravy with an ingredient list that reads like a scientific classification. I think Southerners are just trying to show off to folks of the northern persuasion when they do that. There’s no need.
Milk, flour, and sausage = sausage gravy. That’s all there is to it!
Now, who’s ready to learn how to make sausage gravy?
Recipe Ingredients
- Milk
- Flour (self-rising flour, plain flour, almond flour, or coconut flour)
- Sausage
- Salt and pepper
- Biscuits for serving
How to Make Sausage Gravy
Slice your sausage in whatever thickness you prefer. I usually go for about half an inch but some people like it thinner.
Place sausage in a pan or skillet over medium heat.
Cook until browned.
It will look something like this.
Remove the cooked sausage from the pan and place it on a paper towel-lined plate to drain.
You will have a good bit of grease left in your skillet. You need about two tablespoons, so if you have more drain it off to leave about that much.
Sprinkle three to four tablespoons of flour in your skillet.
Cook this over medium-low heat until the flour is brown.
Scrape the bottom of the skillet to stir the sausage bits into your gravy, then salt and pepper to taste.
Add milk. I added about a cup and a half here.
Stir well until smooth and creamy.
Take a piece of sausage or two and crumble it up in your gravy.
I made a small amount of gravy so I just used one sausage.
There you have it: you now know how to make sausage gravy It’s that easy.
Now, most folks will take a biscuit, set it on their plate, and spoon gravy onto it.
They might cut it in half first and spoon gravy on both halves.
That’s not how we really like it though. We REALLY like to tear our biscuit up in our bowl, because that’s what our mamas did when we were little! Spoon the creamy sausage gravy all over it. At this point, you can use a fork or get a spoon and really pretend your mama is there.
Storage
- Store homemade gravy leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. Reheat in the microwave or on the stovetop.
- You can also freeze leftovers for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge before reheating as above.
Recipe Notes
- You can use either ground pork breakfast sausage, spicy pork sausage, or Italian sausage.
- For heat, add a pinch of cayenne or crushed red pepper flakes.
- For added flavor, add 1/2 teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder.
Recipe FAQs
What do you serve with sausage gravy?
Besides some homemade drop biscuits, Southern sausage gravy also tastes great with fried potatoes, hashbrowns, grits, and even just toast.
Can I make this easy sausage gravy recipe ahead of time?
If you like, you can make sausage gravy the night before, store it in the fridge overnight, and quickly reheat it on the stovetop before serving it for breakfast.
How do I make gluten-free sausage gravy?
Simply use your favorite gluten-free flour alternative and you have yourself gluten-free sausage gravy.
Check out these other gourmet gravy recipes:
Chicken Fried Steak Recipe With Gravy
Recipe For Turkey Gravy (Easy and Delicious)
Southern Cubed Steak and Milk Gravy
Crispy Breaded Pork Chops with Milk Gravy (and MeMe’s Mashed Potatoes)
Garlic Cream Biscuits with Bacon Gravy
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups milk
- 3 tbsp flour
- sausage
- salt and pepper to taste
- biscuits for serving
Instructions
- Slice your sausage in whatever thickness you prefer. I usually go for about half an inch but some people like it thinner. Place sausage in a pan or skillet over medium heat and cook until brown. Remove the cooked sausage from the pan and place it on a paper towel-lined plate to drain.sausage
- You will have a good bit of grease left in your skillet. You need about two tablespoons, so if you have more drain it off to leave about that much.
- Sprinkle three to four tablespoons of flour in your skillet. Cook this over medium-low heat until the flour is brown. Scrape the bottom of the skillet to stir the sausage bits into your gravy, then salt and pepper to taste. Add milk and stir well until smooth and creamy.3 tbsp flour, salt and pepper to taste, 1.5 cups milk
- Take a piece of sausage or two and crumble it up in your gravy. Serve over a warm biscuit.biscuits for serving
Christy I’ve been making your biscuits and gravy over 10 years now.i wouldn’t make anyone’s else!!plus plenty of your other recipes.love you your blog and family.Merry Christmas to all of you and the best in the new year
Merry Christmas to you too! Thank you for the kind words about the biscuits and gravy recipe. Christy mostly works on her fellowship now for the last year and a half but I will pass on your kind words. Thank you also for being such a loyal member of the Southern Plate Family. So lucky to have you with us 🙂
Hi Christie! I need your help. I have a teacher friend who says she remembers a recipe from her youth (she grew up in Michigan but has family in the south.) She says her mom and grandmother made something called ray’s gravy or she puts it, she doesn’t really know if it is Ray’s after a person, or Raise Gravy like “raise yourself out of bed and come to breakfast” As she remembers it is gravy with Pet milk and bacon drippings served over spoon bread. We cannot find any reference to this and I told her if anyone would have an answer, you would. Please don’t let me down!!!! P.S I am a northern girl whose Clarksville mother-in-law, God rest her opened up my world to a whole new way of cooking. My own mother made a great pot roast but I swear I never had a cake made from scratch until I was an adult and most of out veg came from a can. I love your blog and your recipes! Thanks.
Hey Ellen! Thank you so much for your faith and I do believe I can help!
The gravy you are speaking of sounds like our classic milk gravy. I am going to share a recipe that begins with sausage but you can also start it with bacon. Also, back in the day, pet milk (canned milk) was a favorite in the south in recipes and my grandmothers used it quite often. It is a really rich flavor that just makes everything better!
So take this recipe, use bacon and bacon drippings in place of sausage and sausage drippings, and pet milk in place of whole and VOILA! It is DELICIOUS over biscuits, rice, fried chicken, etc. Recipe> https://www.southernplate.com/how-to-make-sausage-milk-gravy/
Excellent recipe and tutorial! I made this this morning with hot Freshland sausage. I served it with homemade biscuits and scrambled eggs. My husband was not fortunate enough to be raised on biscuits and gravy. His mother is half German and half Yankee so she didn’t make them. My husband loves them though, and so do my children (ages 1 and 3). This was plenty of gravy for my small family of 4. I would say it makes about 2 cups once you add a little crumbled up sausage. When I reheated it, I added a bit more milk before I microwaved it. Thanks again!
I love your site my family always loves everything I cook from here keep it going your amazing ! And with added humor to it it makes it a more friendly website I feel…. have a blessed day I’ll definitely be posting again soon.
Thank you so much Cheyenne!!! I am so glad your family is enjoying the recipes!!
I’m a Yankee girl cooking for a Southern-born husband. I’ve mastered the buttermilk biscuits and milk gravy with bacon grease. Yesterday he asked for sausage gravy so that was tonight’s dinner project and it turned out quite well with Jimmy Dean sausage, so I’m quite pleased. Every time he asks for something, I have to search the internet for “southern” kind of recipes so I can get it right! My first peach cobbler was a failure, so I have to work on that one. Thank you, Christy, for making this site for those of us cooking in a mixed marriage!
LOL, so glad I can help out!!
Thank u for posting this simple recipe! I’m from Maryland, so there are a lot of influences from both the north & the south here when it comes to food. My MomMom used to make chipped beef gravy, sausage gravy, & hamburger gravy all the time when I was little, & she’d always tear up the biscuits! Thank you for this simple recipe, as I’ve never made my own gravy. I don’t care for sausage, but I’m going to use this recipe to make hamburger gravy!
I hope you enjoy it Christi!!!
I think you may have a bunch of undercover Yankees here…no one’s mentioned gravy on grits….yum, yum. Yankees seem to believe you eat grits plain. Personally some of my favorites are butter, honey and butter and GRAVEEEEE. YUM, YUM.
Also goes great on scrambled eggs, and mashed or baked ‘taters…
Love this stuff!
Grits served w/ maple syrup ..the climate is too mild for sap/syrup yield. How did yankee maple get to grits?