before going out for tomorrow's deer hunt. For several years I've made sausage gravy to bring up to the property at 0-dark-30 opening day. Landowner's brother makes up a nice big pan of what is simply called around here "egg bake." When that's near done, the biscuits go in while the gravy reheats on the stove, stirred alot. Always made the day before, seems to be better the next day as often seems to happen to a stew or chili recipe.
Pretty generic ingredients but the sum is greater than the parts imo. After trying to get "cute" a couple of times, pretty much standard bulk breakfast sausage is used, about 1 lb./batch, which lets the black pepper do its thing. The cooking is more important to the whole shebang really than the ingredients, and a few of those tips given to me were from a SP5 who was the best thing to put on cook's whites that ever walked the planet, or took care of a crashout crew. A confident good ol' boy who will never need to brag because he knows he was revered.
(He always seemed to know the klaxon was gonna go off before the SDO; else how could he meet us at the bottom of the stairs with egg & sausage stuffed between 2 thick pieces of French toast? That boy had some powers. I thought he was a little bit of 'touched' genius.)
These lessons were:
- Gimme 1 deep cast iron skillet Vassiliy ("cast iron only please.")
- Whole milk (anything else is dish water)
- You are supposed to have chunks of sausage; reducing the whole thing to birdshot size pieces is a felony.
- It's perfectly OK to sorta start to burn the sausage but you have to keep stirring it; still, some crispy crumbles in the bottom helps the "pot likker" aspect.
- It's NOT ok to burn the flower once added. Otherwise it ends up looking the color of something like the dog was purging on your carpet.
- Stir, watch, & worry over it. This is a major key. When things start thickening & bubbling reduce heat to minimum and KEEP stirring, watching, and worrying.
It's the best stuff on the planet. Hunters need big chunks of oak in their furnaces; balsa or birch won't get it done. And the best thing, if done right (unlike traditional grease coated bacon & eggs), it won't have you digging for that partial roll of TP about 0815 just as you hear some herd crashing your way.
Nuthin' fancy. Good hunting.
