Brielle's Avalon

I just realized I have leftover bacon grease from the potatoes I made the other day, so I threw together some biscuits. While they’re in the oven I’ll make some milk gravy and in a few minutes have a really yummy, simple breakfast or dinner and a warm kitchen.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp bacon fat, butter, olive oil or whatever grease is leftover from what you just cooked.

2 Tbsp flour

1/2 c milk plus enough to make it as thick or thin as you like

bacon, sausage, pepper and seasonings to taste

Take 2 Tbsp bacon fat, butter or olive oil (we’re making a roux, so pay attention, this is how you start a lot of sauces). You can also use whatever fat is left from whatever you just cooked.

Once that’s melted take 2 Tbsp flour and mix over medium heat until it’s just slightly tan.

You don’t need this gravy dark but you still don’t want it to taste of raw flour.

Slowly add 1/2 c milk, stirring constantly to keep it blended. I use a fork, some people use a whisk or a spoon.

Add enough milk to make the gravy as thick or thin as you like.

Add bacon bits

and pepper to taste.

Pick out your favourite plate.

When the biscuits come out of the oven cut them open, better liberally and slather with gravy. Add salt and more pepper and eat!

You can sauté chopped or sliced onions in the oil before adding the flour. Garlic is good, too. Paprika can be fun to sprinkle on top. Experiment with seasonings. You can also leave the bacon bits out or substitute sausage, ham, salt pork or whatever you happen to have. If you want to make it seem more like a real meal fry up an egg as part of a British morning fry-up, serve with fried green tomatoes, a tossed salad, beans or soup. It’s good for breakfast or dinner and is obviously quick and can expand to serve a crowd.

Once upon a time people worried about lumps in their gravy. Companies making ready-to-serve gravy used this to promote their lump-free gravy in ads. I started telling people to stop worrying about their lumps because that just proved their gravy was home-made. Companies stopped mentioning no-lumps in their ads, but I think it had more to do with people forgetting how to make gravy and not understanding the thing about lumps than it had to do with anything I said way-back when.