Well, I recently made buttermilk biscuits, so you might have seen this coming. But you can’t really learn how to make biscuits without also learning how to make sausage gravy.

Because they just go hand in hand so perfectly.

Crunchy, layered biscuits smothered in creamy gravy with sausage spiced to perfection.

Unfortunately, my wife enjoys neither sausage nor gravy. I don’t know why. Cause they are delicious – both separately and together in sausage gravy. Plus she loves basically anything to do with breakfast food. So…

So I don’t tend to make this very often. But it is one of the first things that I really learned how to make. When I was first out on my own

It is simple, flavorful comfort food at its best.

Using a Roux!

I always get excited when I get the chance to feature a roux for the site. It just feels right.

And this gravy is built with a modified roux of sorts. My very first post on the site was a deeper dive into how to make a roux. But in general, it is a mixture of fats and flour that helps to thicken a sauce.

So for this gravy, we will cook the sausage in a pan, use the fat from cooking and add a little bit of butter to combine with the flour to make a roux. The cooked pork will be included in the roux, and will probably soak up all of the butter and flour. As seen in the photo above.

But it will release everything back into the gravy when the milk and cream are added.

When making this, know that you can sub out the heavy cream for a cup of milk instead. It will just be a little less creamy in the final result. Also, you can add in some red pepper flakes or another kind of ground pepper (like chipotle) to add a bit more spice if you are into that like me.

Sausage Gravy for Breakfast

In my mind, breakfast foods are for breakfast or brunch. My wife disagrees and thinks they’re fine for having basically any time of day. It seems to me like she almost prefers to have them for dinner. I don’t get it.

So for me, sausage gravy is a distinctly breakfast item that pairs well with other breakfast foods.

Recipes to pair with this one:

• Buttermilk biscuits and gravy
• Tater tots smothered in sausage gravy
• Breakfast enchiladas?! (shoutout to Cooking with K, I have to try these)
• Over-easy eggs with gravy

I mean, just look at the main recipe card photo below. Sausage gravy smothering flaky biscuits. Mmmmmmmmm. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I guess enough said.

Try it and you’ll be hooked.

Homestyle Sausage Gravy

Recipe by Marc PetersonCourse: Breakfast, BrunchDifficulty: Easy

Servings

8

servings

Prep time

5

minutes

Cooking time

20

minutes

Total time

25

minutes

Meet the perfect southern breakfast comfort food sauce that is creamy and full of spices and flavor – sausage gravy

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground pork sausage

• 2 cloves minced garlic

• 2 teaspoons ground sage

• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

• 2 tablespoons butter

• 1/3 cup flour

• 2 cups milk

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream

• (optional) 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Directions

• Combine the sausage, garlic, sage, paprika, salt, and pepper in a large frying pan
• Cook on medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes until the sausage is fully cooked, stirring and breaking up the sausage into smaller pieces while it is cooking
• Add the butter to the pan and let it melt
• Sprinkle the flour over the sausage and stir it together, cooking for 2 to 3 minutes
• Pour in the milk and cream and stir to combine with the sausage, also add in red pepper if using
• Let the mixture come to a simmer so that it starts to thicken, stirring occasionally until it comes to the desired consistency, about 5 to 10 minutes – note that the sauce will thicken as it cools once it is served

Notes

• The gravy will thicken as it cools after you serve it, so do not over-thicken it in the pan
• If the gravy is too thick, stir in a half cup of milk

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The post How to Make Sausage Gravy appeared first on Do You Roux?.

For me, a good chicken pot pie is the quintessential comfort food. A perfectly golden-brown crust blankets a medley of vegetables, chicken, and sauce to bind it all together. Mmmm mmmm mmmm. It’s an impeccable balance between the flaky crust and velvety guts.

My family has always referred to the filling of a chicken pot pie as the guts. Enough that it took me a minute to remember that it is typically called pie filling. So when I mention the guts here, I am not trying to be gross or off-putting. It just doesn’t feel right to call it by any other name. No matter what Shakespeare said. Though pie guts by any other name would still taste delightful.

Chicken pot pie is one of my favorites. For years, any time I came to visit my parents I would beg my mom to make it. While still delicious every time mom makes it, I can now have it whenever I want. It’s a dangerous skill to have…

How it Started

Learning to make pot pie began as a hungry young teen when I would sneak into the kitchen because I simply couldn’t wait for the food to bake. That was too long and I needed food. So if I was there when the guts were done but before being covered by dough, I could pilfer some creamy filling. Eventually, this led to me being in the kitchen earlier and earlier in the cooking process.

My mom got smart and had me earn my keep – chopping carrots, peeling potatoes, or shredding chicken. I was in the mix and seeing the whole process from start to finish. And because I love chicken pot pie so much, it ended up being one of the very first recipes that I really learned how to make.

However, I never really focused on making the crust. My dutiful sous chef and wife, Brooke, made crusts for me while I focused on putting the pie guts together. A great opportunity to spend time together in the kitchen. I did try my hand at making crusts eventually as well. And now have a post on how to make the ultimate pie crust.

I tend to make too much food. This holds true when I am making the pie guts for chicken pot pie. But my wife and I soon realized we could use this to our advantage and freeze the extra filling. If you make a double-batch then you can freeze the unbaked mixed together pie guts for up to 6 months. Then when the hankering for pot pie strikes, just take the filling into the fridge for 24-48 hours before you are ready to make the pie.

Customize Your Pot Pie

This recipe is especially good for days when you have leftover chicken, or if you just grab a rotisserie chicken from Costco to use. You can also switch it up to a turkey pot pie by simply swapping turkey for the chicken (great for leftovers of your beautifully cooked Thanksgiving turkey). A lot of the recipe is fairly adaptable to whatever you are in the mood for or have on hand. I’ve used sweet potatoes in place of the potatoes and thrown in asparagus, green beans, or corn depending on how I felt.

It is also fun to decorate your pie. For this pie I rolled out some extra dough and used a snowflake cookie cutter to punch out some decorations and place them on top before baking. Plus, I was able to cover up a couple of spots on the top crust that had ripped a little and didn’t look very pretty. Win, win.

You can also cook the chicken in a variety of ways to use in this recipe. My mom would frequently boil the chicken breast. For making the pie in this post, I seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, ground sage, dried thyme, and garlic powder. Then I seared the outside on the stovetop for a few minutes and placed it in the oven at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes until it was done cooking. It helped to use an oven-safe pan when searing the chicken so that I could just put it straight from stovetop to oven.

One of my favorite aspects of making chicken pot pie from scratch is how you can make it your own based on what is available or what you enjoy most. Let me know in the comments your favorite ingredient to throw into the chicken pot pie mix.

From Scratch Chicken Pot Pie

Recipe by Marc PetersonCourse: EntreesDifficulty: Intermediate

Servings

8

servings

Prep time

40

minutes

Cooking time

40

minutes

Total time

1

hour 

20

minutes

A selection of hearty vegetables, chicken, and sauce baked into a buttery, flaky crust. Comfort food to the max.

Ingredients

• Pie Guts

• 3 large potatoes

• 2 large carrots

• 1 celery rib

• 1/2 cup frozen peas

• 3 cloves of garlic

• 1 large shallot (or about half a cup chopped red onion)

• 4 tablespoons butter

• 6 tablespoons flour

• 3/4 cup chicken stock

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

• 2 cups cooked and cubed chicken (2 large boneless, skinless breasts)

• Crust

• Follow this pie crust recipe or use any other crust you prefer

Directions

• Crust
• Make ahead or buy a premade crust to use with this recipe – note that my pie crust recipe needs an hour in the fridge after coming together
• Pie Ingredients
• Peel and cube potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces
• Slice carrots into 1/4″ thick rounds
• Thinly slice celery
• Mince the garlic and shallots
• Bring 4 quarts salted water to a boil
• Put potatoes and carrots into the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes until fork tender
• Once potatoes and carrots are ready, turn off the heat and toss in the celery and frozen peas then let sit for 2 minutes
• Drain the vegetables using a colander in the sink
• Roux and Sauce – Can be made while waiting for water to boil for the vegetables
• Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan on medium heat
• Add the garlic and shallots and let them simmer in the butter for 3 to 5 minutes
• Whisk in the flour to make a roux and let it cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly – note that it will be a relatively thick mixture once the flour is incorporated
• Whisk the broth, cream, salt, and pepper into the roux until it is all incorporated, and turn off the heat
• Assembly and Baking
• Take the pie dough out of the fridge to sit for a few minutes at room temperature
• Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C)
• Mix the vegetables, chicken, and the sauce together to make the guts
• Roll out the bottom crust on a floured surface to about 11″ in diameter and place it in a 9″ pie dish
• Fill the pie dish with your filling
• Roll out the top crust on a floured surface to about 10″ in diameter and cover your pie
• Add any decorations, edging, etc. to the pie and cut off any extra overhanging dough
• Bake your pie in the oven for around 40 minutes until golden brown
• Let it cool, cut into slices, and enjoy

The post From Scratch Chicken Pot Pie appeared first on Do You Roux?.

It’s only fitting that the first recipe I share is my site’s namesake, a roux. It comes from the fancy-looking French word meaning red that rhymes with the sound a cow makes. A roux is a mix of fat and flour that is used as a thickener in sauces, soups, gravies, etc. It is a basic building block in a variety of other recipes.

You’d use a roux to make mac and cheese, gumbo, chowder, chicken pot pie, and more. I love making sauces, so I end up turning to this skill quite frequently.

A sauce is essentially a flavorful, thickened liquid. That thickening typically happens in one of two ways; cooking and reducing it down through evaporation or adding some kind of starch that helps add body to it. This is where a roux – with its starchy flour – comes to the rescue.

The Basics

A roux is the base of four of the five mother sauces in French cuisine. A roux by itself is not really a full sauce. But it is a key step to get you to most finished sauces, a good basis from which to invent your own sauces or a great way to thicken other things up. The four mother sauces that come from a roux are: bechamel, veloute, espagnole and tomat.

Despite coming from a word meaning red, the various depths to which you cook a roux change from a light buttery white to a nutty brown to a dark muddy brown. Not really red in my mind. So go figure. 

The basic recipe for a roux is real simple – 1 part fat to 1 part flour by weight. Most of the time you can fudge the numbers, forgo weighing things, and just use the same volume of each ingredient. It’s close enough for most things. Essentially throw it in a pan, mix it up and cook it to the desired level. In traditional French cooking, the usual fat used is butter. Cajun cuisine often calls for vegetable oil. Nearly any fat will work but consider the flavor of the fat and how it will pair with everything else in your finished dish.

Types of Roux

For a white roux, you want something barely cooked together just long enough that it doesn’t taste like buttered flour. This is the most common type of roux since it has the most thickening power, and that is usually the main goal of whipping one up. Its flavor is beginning to transform but it isn’t overpowering, and will easily take a back seat to whatever you combine it with. This makes it much more important for the texture than for affecting the flavor of the sauce or soup.

A blond roux is cooked a little longer than a white one and is more of a nutty brown to light caramel in color. The more it cooks, the more flavor it will add to the final dish. On the other hand, the more it cooks the less thickening power it will have. Some people also delineate a peanut butter roux as a step between blond and brown. It is not cooking one with peanut butter, but a description of the color you should expect to see.

A long-cooking brown roux will have next to no thickening properties but will add a lot of nutty, almost chocolatey flavor. This type of roux is common for cajun and creole cooking and, along with adding spices and heat, is part of what gives it such a distinct flavor. It is easiest to achieve using oil as the fat.

The Process

The change in color during the cooking process is very gradual. But there is also no need to get to an exact and specific stage for your recipe. As long as you have taken it to about the right stage, then you are good to use it in the recipe calling for the roux.

If you do not stir frequently, then some solids may tend to settle to the bottom. Just be sure to whisk them back into the mix and it will come back together.

Get a handle on this basic cooking skill and you will have a whole world of sauces, soups, and chowders available to you.

If you’re looking for recipes to flex your new roux making super powers, try one of the following:

• Chicken Pot Pie
• Comfort Food Mac and Cheese
• Sausage Gravy
• Simple Turkey Gravy

How did yours turn out?

I’d love to hear when you try out making a roux! Take a pic of your food and share your success with me by adding it to your Instagram stories or feed, and tagging me @doyouroux, or by using #doyouroux.

Plus, leave a rating to let me know how you liked the recipe. It helps me out a lot to know how things worked out… or didn’t.

How to Make a Roux

Course: How To Tuesdays, SaucesDifficulty: Easy

Cooking time

15

minutes

Simmer fat and flour to make a basic thickening agent for a wide variety of sauces and soups.

Ingredients

• 1 part fat by weight

• 1 part flour by weight

Directions

• Heat a pan to medium
• Add the fat (butter, oil, Crisco, bacon grease, etc.) to the heated pan, make sure it’s liquified before proceeding
• Add the flour and whisk together with the fat until no lumps remain, the mixture will start to bubble up
• Simmer the fat and flour, stirring frequently for an even cook until the roux has turned to the desired color: 3-5 minutes for a white roux, 10-15 minutes for a blond roux and 20-30 minutes (or more) for a brown roux

Notes

• Vegetable oil is typically used for a dark roux
• You can make a roux ahead and either refrigerate or freeze for later use

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The post How to Make a Roux appeared first on Do You Roux?.