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Homemade Sausage Gravy

January 1, 2012 by Laura 65 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Biscuits and Gravy

Have I ever told you about the time I made a cream gravy for a special boyfriend many years ago? We had reached our six month dating anniversary, and so, to celebrate, I was making him a dinner of hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, and I can’t remember what else.

Everything was coming along pretty well. I called my mom five or twenty times while I was preparing the food, mostly so that she could walk me through the gravy making process. I thought I had it all figured out and soon, it was time for us to enjoy our meal together.

But the gravy. Somehow between hanging up the phone with mom, calling my boyfriend in for the meal, and serving the food – the gravy (if, in fact, we can call it gravy) had turned into a thick, heavy paste like substance. How could this have happened?

Never fear. My boyfriend was very kind. He simply got a butter knife and spread chunks of gravy onto his meat and potatoes. Then he proceeded to eat heartily, and even complimented me on the great flavor of the food.

Yeah, he was a nice one all right. I shouldn’t have let that one get away. Oh wait. I didn’t. A few months after I made him choke on gravy, that nice boy asked me to marry him. I guess he figured that if he could survive my gravy, we could get through anything – thick and thin. (Ha, get it? Thick and thin? The gravy was thick. Get it? Okay, it wasn’t that funny.)

I have since then perfected my gravy making skills, much to the delight of my boyfriend husband, and all of our darling offspring. Here is my sausage gravy recipe and a picture tutorial that will hopefully spare you all from making the same pasty mess that was once my “gravy”.

Homemade Sausage GravyYum

1 pound turkey sausage (I like using this homemade recipe.)
1 Tablespoon plus 3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour (I use freshly ground white whole wheat)
2 1/2 cups milk
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Begin by browning the sausage with one tablespoon of butter in a large skillet until it is cooked thoroughly.

Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter, stirring it around until is has melted.

Sprinkle in the flour. Stir it around with the meat and butter until it is absorbed.

You should now have kind of a thick, meat mixture in your skillet. Turn the heat on your burner up to “high”.

Pour in the milk, and stir constantly. I find that I must leave the burner turned to “high” in order for the gravy to thicken.

Continue to stir over high heat until gravy becomes thick and bubbly. Remove the gravy from the heat, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Trouble shooting your gravy:  If your gravy turns out too thick, simply add more milk, small amounts at a time, continuing to stir, until gravy is the desired consistency.

If your gravy fails to thicken, mix a “paste” of 2 Tablespoons flour with 3 Tablespoons of water. Stir the mixture into your gravy, little bits at a time until the gravy thickens to desired consistency. Do NOT sprinkle flour directly into the gravy. That’s how lumpy gravy is made. :)

We love this gravy served over these Whole Wheat Biscuits.

Have any fun stories about boyfriends or gravy you’d like to share? :)

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Healthy Crock Pot Recipes: Turkey Sausage and Red Bean Stew

October 18, 2011 by Laura 30 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

This Turkey Sausage and Red Bean Stew is a pretty awesome comfort food!

How nice is it that I put this stew into my crock pot before a soccer game, then came home to dinner all ready and waiting for us to eat? In fact, my crock pot was so nice that as we walked in the door, it scooped the prepared stew into six serving bowls, poured milk for us to drink, set the table and sang us a song while we gathered around. Okay, not really. But still, having a hot meal ready and waiting made me feel like someone else had done all the work.

This stew is especially easy to make if you already have turkey sausage and red beans cooked up ahead of time. I typically make six pounds of the sausage at a time, then freeze it in one pound packages, making it easy to throw into a meal like this one.

Turkey Sausage and Red Bean StewYum

Healthy Crock Pot Recipes: Turkey Sausage and Red Bean Stew
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • 1 pound turkey sausage (browned)
  • 2 cups cooked red beans or 1 can (15 ounces) small red beans
  • ½ cup brown rice (uncooked)
  • 1 cup water
  • 1½ cups corn (frozen or canned)
  • 2 cups tomato juice
  • ½ cup chopped sweet green pepper (more if you like)
  • salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
  1. Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker.
  2. Cook on low setting for 6 hours.
  3. This stew is great served with hot cornbread and a glass of milk.
  4. It is also gluten free - a bonus for those of you with GF needs!
3.4.3177

You need this recipe: Turkey Sausage

Crock Pot Turkey Sausage and Red Bean Stew

With my crock pot cooking our dinner for us, now all I need is an appliance that will clean my kitchen for me. Oh wait – that’s what the kids are for. We make kitchen clean-up a family project – here’s a post explaining more, along with a free downloadable kitchen chore chart.

Is it stew weather where you live? (If it’s still warm and sunny at your house, break it to me gently.) ;)

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Freezer Full of Healthy Foods

September 19, 2011 by Laura 22 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

I’m happy to report that I was able to cross off everything on last week’s Make Ahead Healthy Foods list, plus a little extra! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  If you want to get ahead in the kitchen, just do a little extra every once in a while. Here are a few pictures showing what I worked on during the past seven days:

I put my boys on the task of scrubbing 10 pounds of potatoes (the amount that fits well in my big roaster). We baked them to turn them into Hashbrowns.

If you’ve not tried making Hashbrowns this way – you’ve gotta try it! These are so easy, delicious and make for a great quick breakfast or dinner side dish. I freeze them on cookie sheets, then transfer them to freezer bags. Having frozen hashbrowns ready to grab and cook quickly is so nice!

I mixed up a batch of Honey Oat Crunch Cereal that is great to have on hand for a quick breakfast or a snack. (This recipe is in my Think Breakfast Outside the Box ebook.)  I wish I remembered to make this more often – it’s great to have on hand. I just stick it in a jar and put it on top of the fridge. We eat it with raisins and other dried fruit, plain or with milk or cream. So good!

I guess I was on a roll with breakfast foods last week! I made a batch of Giant Breakfast Cookies. We ate half and froze half.

I made six pounds of Turkey Sausage, freezing it into eight meal sized bags. I LOVE having this on hand to use in my Pancake Sausage Muffins and Easy Breakfast Casserole. Plus, since I now have frozen hashbrowns, I can throw some of this sausage in with the hashbrowns, scramble eggs into it and we’ve got a meal. Easy!

I had ordered a big box of strawberries from Azure Standard which arrived last week. We ate as many as we could while they were fresh, but the rest needed to make their way into the freezer. I like freezing them on cookie sheets first so that they don’t stick together in freezer bags later. Aren’t they purty?

I’ve already shared about how I made Homemade Beef Bologna – we ate some and froze some. I also made Tammy’s Homemade Spicy Beef Pepperoni, but if we thought my bologna pictures were not pretty, my beef pepperoni pictures were even worse. Come to think of it, I didn’t even take pictures of the pepperoni. The pepperoni itself was so very ugly, I hid it from my kids before they could see it and decide they didn’t like it before they’d tried it. BUT, when I sliced it and put it on pizza, it was very delicious. So, I now have ugly bologna and ugly pepperoni in my freezers too, but I’ll spare you the agony of having to see pictures of them. ;)

Have you made anything healthy and tasty for your freezer lately?

In case you’re wondering, here’s a post on How I Freeze Food.

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Healthy Homemade Breakfast Burritos

February 27, 2010 by Laura 41 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Well, I made the kids mad at lunch today. I stood there making 20 breakfast burritos and wouldn’t even let them eat one.

Instead, they had to eat tuna.   I was heartless enough to actually make them wait until next week to eat the Breakfast Burritos. Hey, I’m just trying to get ahead here. Someday when they become the parent, they too might have a Breakfast Burrito agenda and make their children settle for tuna. And then they’ll come back to me and tell me how sorry they are for being mad about the 2010 Withholding of the Breakfast Burritos.

Someday.

breakfast_burritos_2

Homemade Breakfast BurritosYum

1 pound turkey sausage, browned
12 eggs, scrambled
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (I use Landmark Raw White Cheddar)
2 cup salsa (more or less to taste)
20 whole wheat tortillas*

*Tortilla Hint:  If you’re making your own tortillas (and if you aren’t, you really should be, because YUM)…try this tip to make burrito forming so much easier! As you roll your tortillas, cook them on just one side, leaving the other side softer and more flexible.  Also, I find it works best to form the burritos within two or three hours of making the tortillas…before the tortillas have been refrigerated.

To put together the burritos:

Stir together scrambled eggs, cooked sausage, cheese and salsa. (I leave out the salsa at first and make up some salsa-less burritos for a couple of boys in my life who don’t like salsa. Then I add salsa to the remainder of the mix and make a few with salsa for the rest of us!)

breakfastburritos2smPlace a nice spoonful of burrito mixture onto a tortilla.

breakfastburritos3smFold in the ends.

breakfastburritos4smFold up one side, and then the other.

breakfast_burritos

Place burritos in a freezer bag and store in the freezer for up to three months.

To reheat:  Place desired number of thawed or frozen burritos on a baking sheet. Heat in a 350° oven for 10-20 mintues until heated through.

P.S. The children weren’t mad for long. They really like tuna…but just temporarily forgot that fact when they smelled the sausage cooking. They happily ate their tuna and will ever so much more happily eat their Breakfast Burritos some morning next week when I have yet another agenda:  the-hurry-up-and-eat-breakfast-so-that-you-can-start-your-handwriting-and-math…agenda.

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Make Homemade Turkey Sausage!

May 12, 2008 by Laura 163 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Make this turkey sausage recipe even easier by creating a jar of seasonings for this sausage. Learn how!

We LOVE ham and sausage at our house, but from what I read, pork is not the best for you. We do eat bacon from time to time, but this Turkey Sausage is a delicious alternative to pork. It’s easy and it tastes great!

See? It looks like sausage and everything?! My family devours this sausage.

Homemade Turkey Sausage

Homemade Turkey SausageYum

Make Homemade Turkey Sausage!
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Ingredients
  • 1 pound ground turkey
  • 3 Tablespoon minced onion
  • ¼ teaspoon cumin
  • ¼ teaspoon marjoram
  • ¼ teaspoon ground pepper
  • ¼ teaspoon oregano
  • ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ teaspoon dried basil
  • ½ teaspoon thyme
  • ½ teaspoon sage
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 egg (optional)
Instructions
  1. Mix all ingredients.
  2. Chill for about an hour. (If you forget to chill this ahead of time...it cooks up okay anyway!)
  3. Form into patties.
  4. Saute in butter.
3.4.3177

You’ll find more recipes like this in my ebook:  Think Breakfast…Outside of the Box or in my “actual book” Oh, For Real: Real Food, Real Family, Real Easy.

What can you do with this Turkey Sausage? Here are our favorite ways to use this:

  • Just eat it. Turkey Sausage Patties are pretty great as a breakfast meat along with eggs, pancakes, or muffins.
  • Homemade Sausage Gravy is amazing. I like to make a huge batch of this sausage, then freeze it browned and crumbled in 1-pound meal-sized portions. Then I just pull it out and quickly make gravy. Of course, we eat this gravy over biscuits. This means that you also need my Quick Mix Biscuits recipe.
  • Turkey Sausage and Red Bean Stew is a wonderful comfort food – made easier if you have this sausage made ahead of time.
  • Sometimes I use this sausage in my Spicy Mac and Cheese recipe.
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