Ingredients:

• 1lb of sausage
• olive oil
• 1 cup of flour
• salt
• pepper

Directions:

In a big skillet brown 1 lb. of sausage, adding olive or vegetable oil so that there is about ½ cup of grease/fat left over.  Turn off the burner.  Scrape all the sausage over to one side of the skillet and tilt the skillet to let the grease drain to the other side.  One can accomplish this by letting one side of the skillet slide off the burner onto the stove so that the skillet sits there cock-eyed.

Put about 1 cup of flour into a cereal bowl.  Once the grease has drained completely to the lower side of the skillet, pick the skillet up and turn the burner back on.  Keeping the skillet slightly tilted so the sausage stays on the high side and the grease on the low side, heat the grease on the burner until it gets bubbly.  Start sprinkling in the flour from the bowl so all the grease gets sopped up.  Use a spatula to stir the grease/flour mix.  Once it has a slightly thick consistency (not completely solid) go ahead and lay the skillet out flat on the burner, letting the flour/grease mixture cook for maybe a minute longer.  This is a good time to add salt and pepper.

Pour a little milk into the bubbly grease/fat mix, and begin stirring with the spatula.  The mixture will thicken amazingly fast.  Keep pouring in a little milk and stirring.  You’ll probably do this process six or seven times.  By adding small amounts of milk at a time, you work the gravy up to its full volume.  There will come a time when adding more milk will dilute the thickness, so you have to make a judgment call at this point, deciding how thick you want the final product to be.  With a little practice you’ll develop a feel for how much milk to add at a time to keep the gravy from getting lumpy.  If you do get lumps you can smash them out with the spatula.

One pound of sausage makes about a half-full skillet of gravy, depending on how much extra fat you’ve added to the mix.