Kitchen Failure: Gravy

No Translation Tuesday today… I need to vent about my failure in the kitchen this evening. I am pretty tired of failing at this recipe and I have been failing for years. As I mentioned here I was very close with my Grandma and she passed away 8 years ago. I never got any of her recipes before she died, so I have had to rely on my Mom to get them… which has not been easy. I can make her chicken noodle soup and her cornbread pretty well. I will be sure to post the recipes next time I make them and take pictures. There are plenty of recipes I have been unable to get: bean soup, ham steak, vegetable soup… the list goes on. My Mom continues to be difficult and not give them to me, but that is another topic.

So what is my kitchen failure? My complete and total inability to make my Grandma’s country gravy. I have been trying for eight years and for eight years it has been kicking my ass. I like to have biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs and sausage… like my Grandma use to make for Sunday morning breakfast, but I usually do it for dinner. So I tried again tonight and it was at least edible this time… even good, but not great.  When I first made it a couple of years ago, I had to throw away the giant lump of blackened grease it became. It has gotten better since then… I have made it to edible, but it is still not what my Grandma made. Tonight it had better taste, but it wasn’t the right consistency. I mean, it wasn’t lumpy this time, so that was a step in the right direction, but it was still too thick… there wasn’t enough to go around and cover all of the biscuits. Also, the flavor was better this time than when I have made it in the past, but it still wasn’t distinctive. I don’t know what I am missing.

So here is the recipe:

1)      Fry sausage or bacon, you need the grease. I can’t eat THAT much meat, so I supplement this grease with the leftover grease from past bacon and sausage cooking that I keep in the fridge. In total, you need about two tablespoons. Turn heat in skillet (cast iron, of course).

2)      Sprinkle in one heaping tablespoon of flour and salt and pepper, whisk quickly to make the roux.

3)      Slowly (very, very, very slowly) add in 1 cup milk and keep whisking

4)      As it thickens, slow down on the whisking and lower the temp

And that is it. I can’t figure out how to make the flavor better. I mean, I guess I can add more milk to make it a little thinner. But I have no idea what to do about the flavor. Suggestions blog world? I really want to get this right sometime!