hello I'm Esther Emery and you're watching the homestead skill of the Month Club we're doing old-fashioned cooking this month and today's a project for those who are looking for a project nick is going to be making old-fashioned country gravy it's the simplest recipe in the world but it does make good biscuits and gravy we're not going to do a tutorial of the biscuits but the recipe is allowed and we are doing a tutorial of the gravy all you need for this is about a half a pound of ground sausage and even that is rich you don't necessarily have to have that much recipes like this we're designed to stretch your meat stores so just a little bit of meat will go a long way you need that that little bit of sausage you need a few tablespoons of butter a few tablespoons of flour and a cup of milk you can add herbs and spices to your taste but since the sausage comes with spices that's what sausage is all that Nick is going to add today is salt and pepper all right so I I just brown my sausage that's gonna go in the gravy so I have a little bit of grease in there I'm doing about three tablespoons of butter and I left some meaty bits in there so I wouldn't lose the other good stuff and then when that's mostly melted I'll put in the same amount of flour so equal parts of Greece and four fantastic cooking skill to have and your in your repertoire it's generally equal parts fat and flour a little more fat or a little less flour it might be good or equal parts you just get your hint you're your pan hot and once you have your fat nice and liquid you whisk in that flour bring it to boiling and boil it for a couple of minutes that creates a thickener which actually can be stored as a thickener and used later but right now we're using it just right immediately by adding the liquid of our choice and then that thickener is gonna thicken that liquid for us into gravy you can of course do this with with broth we are choosing for our rich sausage gravy to do it with milk I'm eyeballing it on the amount of milk but go take just a little bit of heat to get the reaction to happen we're thick enough I'm gonna stop cooking it a little bit before it's the consistency I like because it always takes me while they get to the table country gravies gotta have pepper right it's got to be peppery and then the best place to put it is right on a biscuit but since I don't have that I'm gonna cover it skin up using a roux to make gravy it's both easy and forgiving if you boil it for five minutes at a work if you boil it for 1 minute it probably will still work if you add your liquid quickly or slowly it probably will still work the one thing that does help a gravy made from a roux base to do well is if the liquid you add is close to room temperature I think it would be fun to compile a list just for fun of how many things you can do with a roux all the dishes that it can be used at the base to create I'm used it to create a bechamel sauce for a moussaka I'm also used it for um a fettuccine alfredo which is again a very simple sauce with milk but I also can use it to thicken a soup or as a base for a soup in which case almost all the liquid is broth in fact maybe all of the liquid is broth and it's just thickened a little bit by that fat and flour combo at the beginning I'd be interested to hear from all of you but you use a roux floor and also if you make this recipe if you make biscuits and gravy on a good cold winter morning let us know how it goes enjoy your cooking and we'll look forward to seeing you again well thanks for making sausage gravy with us today we hope you enjoyed this frugal and efficient recipe in our old-fashioned cooking series and you