Category: Side dishes

Sausage Gravy

Sausage Gravy

When we go south to visit friends and family I look forward to three specialties of southern cooks: Barbecue, grits and sausage gravy. Today you can find pretty good barbecue throughout the United States, but the really good barbecue is still made in small out-of-the-way restaurants that sometimes seem a little uninviting until you taste those wonderful ribs, burnt ends or pulled pork sandwiches.

There’s one in Kansas City in what was once a gas station and another in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in a long low building that grew along with the business. And though it’s a days’s drive north of the Ohio River, you can get some darned good barbecue at a little take-out restaurant near Dale and University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

More than forty years ago some friends at Murray State University introduced me to a great barbecue place in Fulton, Kentucky. Wonderful rib sandwiches were served in the bar room of an old hotel by a waiter in a white shirt and black bow tie. The meat, smoked in the courtyard behind the hotel, was served with plain white bread. The only condiment was a hot sauce that you soon learned to respect. The little unlabeled bottles were plenty big. No Kansas City or Carolina sauces were allowed in the building.

There’s a restaurant along I-35/I-80 at Des Moines, Iowa, that comes close to matching that old place with the meat and sauce, in case you also like real barbecue.

As you can tell, we often stop at different barbecue restaurants on our trips south. Of course we stay at a lot of hotels too, and all of them offer a hot breakfast, which usually means a waffle machine and a slow cooker filled with sausage gravy next to a tray of biscuits. Our favorite hotels, like the Wildwood Lodge at Des Moines, Iowa, often add grits and bacon to the breakfast bar.

But when I think of a gourmet breakfast, I remember the men’s prayer breakfasts with my brother-in-law at the First United Methodist Church in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Church chef Wayne Rountree served bacon, eggs, sausage gravy, tender hot biscuits and grits to die for. When I told him that his were the best grits I had ever tasted, he smiled and told me that there was a half pound of butter in every gallon batch.

For the lighter appetites there were a couple of choices of cereal, milk, toast, juice, and coffee. It was no wonder that the Men’s Prayer breakfasts were well attended, even though they started at 6:00 AM. I think that every church would benefit from a dedicated church chef like Wayne.

Wayne’s sausage gravy was tastier than most hotel gravies, but I think that mine is better than his. After I posted our sausage gravy recipe on our personal web site a man in England emailed me that he had been making a survey of sausage gravies and that mine was the best one he had found to date. That was a long time ago, so he probably has found another version more to his taste by now, but we still like ours.

With fresh biscuits or toast, sausage gravy makes a hearty breakfast on a crisp morning. You can use either mild or hot pork sausage.

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb. pork sausage
4 T flour
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. tarragon
2 cups milk
Dash of hot sauce
Salt to taste

PROCEDURE:

In a heavy frying pan or skillet cook the sausage and break it into small pieces. Use a slotted spoon to remove the sausage from the pan once it is cooked. Leave the fat from the sausage in the pan. There should be about 4 tablespoons fat, but this will depend upon the sausage. If there is too much fat, spoon some out. If not enough, add some shortening or butter.

Put the flour, salt, tarragon and white pepper in the pan over low heat and blend until it is smooth and begins to bubble. Cook for about three minutes . Do not brown the flour. Add the milk all at once and cook until it bubbles and thickens. Return the sausage to the pan and stir it into the sauce. Add a dash of hot sauce. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve on toast or baking powder biscuits.

NOTES: This recipe serves four adults generously or two adults and one teenaged boy. Add a bit more hot sauce for extra flavor.

Sausage gravy is a good choice for brunch as well as breakfast. It goes especially well with scrambled eggs, bacon, grits and fresh fruit for a brunch buffet.

The white sauce cuts the heat of the spice, so don’t be afraid to try hot pork sausage sometime.

Jeff Smith’s Zwiebelkuchen (Onion Pie)

Since I grew up surrounded by German relatives, you might think that I learned about Zwiebelkuchen from a grandmother or aunt, but alas the truth is that it was The Frugal Gourmet who introduced me to this dish. Jerri gave me Jeff Smith’s book, The Frugal Gourmet On Our Immigrant Ancestors, in 1991, and we have enjoyed many of the recipes. Jeff’s version of Zwiebelkuchen is one of the best.

For most people in the United States the hardest thing about this recipe is mastering the correct pronunciation of the name. Zwiebelkuchen is pronounced Tsvee-bell-kook-en with the double “o” pronounced like the cooing sound doves make. A Zwiebel is an onion and a Kuchen is a cake or in this compound word, a pie.

Kuchen is the German word that became “quiche” in French, a word most of us know from the name of a wonderful custard pie, “Quiche Lorraine.” Besides the basic Quiche Lorraine, which consists of bacon and eggs baked in a crust, there are many variations. The most common version I have found is one in which Swiss or Gruyere cheese is added to the filling, but some recipes include spinach, mushrooms, broccoli, asparagus and cheddar cheese.

Like quiche, Zwiebelkuchen is an egg custard, but it differs in that there is more onion and bacon in the custard than you find in a quiche. This is a quiche with substance, a real meal for hungry people.

If you don’t have a pie crust on hand, you’ll find an easy recipe here.

INGREDIENTS:

4 slices of thick-sliced bacon (about 1/3 pound)
2 medium yellow onions (3 to 3 1/2 inches in diameter)
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 T flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
1 unbaked 10-inch pie shell

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Take the sour cream and eggs out of the refrigerator. Cut the bacon into half inch pieces and fry it over medium heat until it begins to brown. The bacon should not become crisp.

While the bacon is frying, peel and chop the onions medium fine. You should have 2 to 2 1/2 cups of onions. If there is more than a tablespoon of grease in the skillet with the bacon, drain the excess before you add the onions. Continue cooking until the onions are translucent but not brown. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the onions and bacon to cool slightly while you make the custard.

Beat the eggs until lemon colored, then beat in the sour cream. Sprinkle the flour, salt and pepper over the liquid and beat them in thoroughly.

Prick the bottom of the pie crust a few times with a fork, then spread the onion and bacon mixture over the bottom. Pour the custard mixture evenly over the top, put the kuchen on the middle shelf of the oven and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean and the top of the kuchen starts to brown.

With a salad and a glass of beer or wine, Zwiebelkuchen makes a wonderful lunch or light dinner.

NOTES: Jeff Smith’s recipe calls for a nine-inch pie crust, but I find that a ten-inch crust works better. With the larger crust I don’t slop custard on the bottom of the oven, and the kuchen bakes faster, so we can get down to the serious job of eating it sooner.