Sausage gravy over an Amish breakfast haystack
By Kevin Williams
Gravies are a great, cheap way to add flavor to a lot of different dishes. Â Amish cooks are inventive scratch cooks and gravy usually is something that doesn't take many ingredients, so it is a good fit. Tomato gravy is an easy, offbeat popular gravy that is enjoyed on toast and biscuits. Â Milk gravy, sausage gravy, and others are very popular in Amish kitchens. Enjoy our 5-recipe "gravy tour" below!
We'll start with tomato gravy, which seems very popular in the South, but the Amish have adopted it. Â There are much fancier versions but the Amish version is very simple.
Amish Tomato Gravy
4 cups tomato juice
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
Salt and pepper
Bring tomato juice to a boil. Mix together flour and milk. Add to boiling tomato juice. Bring to a boil again and remove from heat. Pour over cubed bread.
AMISH WEDDING GRAVY: Â This is a legendarily popular recipe among the Amish and it can be used to soak over to many different foods. Gloria included the recipe in her column several years ago. Click here for Amish Wedding Gravy.Â
 Dried beef gravy is a Lancaster County, PA specialty. If you like gravy - and who doesn't - try it!
DRIED BEEF GRAVY
1 /4 pound dried beef
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk
Melt butter in skillet. Tear the dried beef into small pieces and stir into the butter.
Brown meat slightly. Stir in flour. When flour is dissolved into butter, add milk stirring constantly.
Cook over low heat until mixture thickens.
This is a go-to recipe in an Amish kitchen for that classic of "biscuits and gravy":
Sausage Gravy
1 lb. sausage
¾ cup flour
¾ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
4 ½ cups milk
Brown and crumble sausage (don't drain it). Add flour, salt and pepper and stir. If the sausage is dry, you may need to add a bit of shortening when adding flour. Add milk while stirring. Heat until it starts to boil and reduce heat and continue to stir until thickened. Makes about 5 cups of gravy.
MILK GRAVY: And this is a recipe I remember from the original Amish cook, a wonderfully easy milk gravy. Perfect also over biscuits!
- ¼ cup pan drippings (bacon drippings or sausage drippings)
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk or heavy cream, room temperature
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Remove the bacon or sausage and place on a plate to drain. Using the same frying pan, over medium high heat add flour and stir until brown with a whisk or fork. Slowly add the milk or cream until the gravy is thick and smooth.
- Season with salt and pepper and serve over biscuits.
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Corrine Bakker
A BIG THANK YOU FOR SUCH WONDERFUL RECEIPES! GOD BLESS YOU!
Kevin
Thank you, Corinne, for stopping by, come back lots!