This is an easy homemade white gravy recipe. White gravy can be used in all kinds of dishes and is easy to make once you get the hang of it!
A reader recently asked if we had a homemade white gravy recipe. White Gravy is one of the recipes in our Dining on a Dime Cookbook and I’ll include it here.
One thing people like about our cookbook is that, in addition to full meal recipes, it includes so many of the basic simple everyday recipes people are looking for like how to mash potatoes, make sweetened ice tea, make basic sauses and so on. Learn more about our Dining On A Dime Cookbook here.
Homemade White Gravy Recipe
2-4 Tbsp. drippings (grease) from chicken, sausage, hamburger, pork chops or whatever meat you are frying
4 Tbsp. flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper (to taste)
After frying the meat, leave 2-4 Tbsp. of drippings (and crumbs) in the pan, draining the rest. Add flour to the drippings and quickly whisk to mix and loosen the crumbs. The mixture will be thick. Slowly add milk, whisking to mix into the flour mix. Whisk well. Bring to a boil, whisking the whole time until mixture is thick. If it gets too thick, just add a little more milk. Salt and pepper to taste.
- This gravy can be used for chicken fried steak, too.
- Gravy is really easy once you know how to make it. Mostly, people are afraid of getting lumps in it but if you whisk the living daylights out of it, that usually takes care of most lumps.
- When I make sausage gravy and biscuits or hamburger gravy, I leave the meat in the pan and just drain off some of the grease and then make the gravy with the meat still in the pan. Ground sausage or hamburger are good types of meat to start with because if you do get a few lumps at first it won’t be obvious because of the texture of the crumbled and fried meat.
- Here’s one rule of thumb that I use. If you roast something in the oven like a roast or turkey, you can use water in place of milk and for anything fried on the stove top, you should use milk. Also, with roasted things I sometimes shake 4 Tbsp. of flour into enough water to make the consistency like a runny pancake batter.
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Now would be a good time to tell you how much I am enjoying my Dining on a Dime Cookbook. I purchased two of them, planning to give one to my son but decided at the last minute to give it to one of my sisters. Her birthday was on June 3 and they arrived just in time to get one to her by then. Now, my sister is 61 and has a store of recipes that she makes all the time but most recently she and her husband have begun working day jobs instead of being gone during the evenings. So, she has not cooked dinner meals for many a year. Since I so enjoy making something good but easy, I thought she would really find your cookbook helpful. At first, she thought it was a strange gift to give her at her age but once she started reading it, found lots of recipes that we used to have as children that she had never made. Anyway, thank you for doing this wonderful cookbook and I know we will use them for a very long time. Also, the menus are a nice touch so everything is there in one place and we don’t have to guess what else to have. Great job!
Two things I would add (and hi Tawra and Jill, long time no comment!):
Make sure to cook the flour with the grease for two minutes or so so it doesn’t taste pasty.
Also, heat the milk in the microwave (I just use a glass measuing cup) before mixing in.
Hi Harriet. Thanks for the tips.
I’m a vegetarian, can i use, like, olive oil, in place of animal fats?( I could use a Morningstar Farms veggie sausage, cooked, and cut into small pieces for a meat-like flavor).
The olive oil will change the flavor of the gravy but you could use something like canola oil or vegetable which wouldn’t change the flavor as much.