My mother used to make a white gravy with thinly sliced beef that she got in packages in the deli section of the grocery store. It wasn’t a true chipped beef because it was refrigerated, not dried. She served it over toast or biscuits.
She also made a hamburger gravy, again with a white gravy made with hamburger broken into small chunks and sautéed. She sometimes served that over biscuits but more often over mashed potatoes.
I don’t think it was until I lived in the South that I found sausage and gravy. While in the West, we ate a lot of potatoes. In the South, we ate biscuits with our gravy.
Two Ways to Make Biscuits and Gravy
You can make your biscuits from scratch or from a mix. If you use a just-add-water biscuit mix, you don’t have to stop and measure. You don’t have to cut the butter into the flour with a pastry knife. Just add water, form, and bake.
You can also make your gravy from scratch although a just-add-water gravy mix makes it super easy; you can do it on the stovetop. Sauté the burger or sausage and maybe a little onion and add it to the gravy.
Just in case you have the time and patience, here's how to cook the gravy from scratch.
Hamburger Gravy Mix from Scratch
- 1/2 sweet onion, diced
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk
Directions
- Sauté the onion and ground beef together in a skillet. Add the salt and pepper. Remove the cooked ground beef and onion and set it aside. Pour all but two to three tablespoons of the fat from the pan.
- Add the flour to the fat and stir to dissolve. Cook for another minute.
- Gradually stir in the milk, a little at a time while stirring with a whisk. Continue cooking until the gravy has thickened and is bubbly.
- Add the meat and onions and serve over biscuits fresh from the oven.
Traditionally, we split the biscuits in half before spooning the gravy over them, but I don’t know that that is important.
Any omelet can be loaded with biscuits and country gravy.
