6/05/13

Bacon Gravy

A rich country gravy recipe made from bacon drippings served over biscuits or toast.


I've never heard of or cooked this in my life! I was going to make sausage gravy but then I had what I thought was this genius idea.

Turns out, this isn't anything new. But it was new to me!

Red Eye Gravy is the breakfast gravy I grew up eating. We had sausage gravy every now and again, but mostly red eye and NEVER bacon gravy!

A rich country gravy recipe made from bacon drippings served over biscuits or toast.

I think maybe we never made it because we always saved our bacon grease for cooking so we wouldn't have wanted to use up so much just for one batch of gravy.

Because seriously, bacon grease could be used as currency where I'm from.

If you're like me and have never had this, you HAVE GOT to try it!

Bacon Gravy! A rich country gravy recipe made from bacon drippings served over biscuits or toast.


Bacon Gravy


Yield: 3-4 Servings
Author:
prep time: 2 Mcook time: 5 Mtotal time: 7 M
A rich country gravy recipe made from bacon drippings served over biscuits or toast.

ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons bacon grease
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • Salt & pepper to taste
  • 3 slices cooked bacon, crumbled

instructions:

How to cook Bacon Gravy

  1. You’ll want to cook this after you've fried up a bunch of bacon so I want to make sure you don’t cook your bacon too hot or that any of the bits burn in the pan. Your gravy will taste like your pan so take care not to scorch or burn anything in it. Once you've cooked your bacon, pour off all the grease, leaving all the glorious bits that cooked off in the pan.
  2. Add 2 tablespoons of bacon grease back to the pan and heat over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the hot oil. Whisk the flour and oil together and cook for 3-4 minutes or until medium brown in color.
  3. Reduce heat to medium-low then slowly add milk to pan, whisking constantly until smooth and well combined with the roux. Add crumbled bacon, salt (a fair amount of salt – I think this should be a little on the salty side) and pepper to taste, then cook for 2-3 minutes. Add more milk if needed until desired consistency is reached.
  4. Serve immediately over biscuits or toast.

NOTES:

Double or triple the recipe as needed - everything cooks the same.
You can eyeball the bacon grease and flour if you want - you want to have about equal amounts of each. You don't want the roux to be as thick as a paste but you don't want it to be runny either. You want it to be about the consistency of ketchup (I really tried to think of something else to compare it to but that's the best I could come up with!).
southern, bacon, gravy, sawmill, cream, milk, toast, biscuits, how to, recipe, easy, best, traditional
Created using The Recipes Generator


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Rich country gravy made from bacon drippings served over biscuits or toast.

46 comments:

  1. I make my "creamed" vegetables this way. LOL Bacon gravy is wonderful!

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  2. This Is the gravy I grew up on and my mom grew up on. It probably goes way back! I watched my mom make this without measurements and I make it the same way. A spoonful here, a cup there....Last year I finally started making sausage gravy but this will always be my fav.

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    1. I grew up on this also. This has been around way before sausage gravy was I believe .Love this

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    2. I grew up on bacon gravy too! Most of my family is from Virginia. I can't make sausage gravy to save my life but this I can do blind folded. My grandma always made it for the family and poured it over biscuits. This recipe uses the same ingredients that I do, it's just eye- balled and not measured. The way Mamaw always made it. "Eyeballed not measured". Heheheh

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  3. We must be from the same part of the South! I have never heard of this either!! I googled it and yours looks a lot better than the other recipes I found :-)

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  4. This is REAL country gravy....I've never had any other kind that was homemade! Melissa in Arkansas

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    1. We've always had gravy made with bacon grease....much better than sausage!

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    2. Same here. My mom was from Arkansas, and though she would sometimes make gravy from sausage grease (NEVER crumbled sausage in the gravy), it was usually bacon gravy with biscuits for breakfast. WAY more flavorful than any sausage gravy I've had anywhere. Yum..

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  5. This gravy is so much better than sausage gravy!!! This is what my Grandma Lil and Mama made.....it is so GOOD. Also using evaporated milk (mixed with equal amount of water) is good. Thanks for sharing!

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  6. Oh Honey...my mama has made this for us since we were little babies...cept we call it milk gravy. Now that we're all grown up, it's a special treat every Christmas and when we go visit my mama. I can make it, but it's not nearly as good as my mamas!

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  7. I use a lb. of sausage and a pack of bacon when I make this. It is awesome. Make the gravy with leftover bacon grease and add flour and milk. Add salt and pepper

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  8. I grew up on toast covered in bacon gravy. It was handed down from my great grandmother and we make it now for our kids.

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  9. I'm planning on puring it over mashed potatoes ! Ha!

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  10. WE LOVE THAT AND EVERY OTHER KIND OF GRAVY BUT THE BEST IS BOLOGNA GRAVY! NOTHING LIKE IT! YUM YUM!

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  11. Sounds great. Will have to try it. I suppose you could put it over a biscuit or whatever, but it sounds good enough to eat with a spoon.

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  12. I have made Bacon Gravy since I first got married..Best kind..

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  13. Grew up on the bacon gravy over biscuits. Loved the stuff even more then homemade pancakes.

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    1. I learned to make this for my husband when we were first married (I thought he was crazy)
      I could not get it right ..... until my in-laws visited relatives in Rome, Georgia ..... one of the cousins, as a big joke, made me a very funny "tape" of step by step directions. I went into the kitchen, laughing all the way, because of his commentary, I made it successfully for the first time.
      Have been making it ever since.... 42 years (both my husband and that cousin have been gone for over 19 years, but I think of them both every time I make it .... yup a converted northerner)
      I love it poured right over the biscuits AND the eggs!!

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  14. This was a staple at my home growing up in a small coal mining town in WV....it was called "Poor Man's Gravy"....and we still call it that today.....love, love, love it!

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  15. Not exactly the same thing,but my Grandma used to fry chopped bacon till crisp,remove to a paper towel to drain.Then she'd fry thick sliced ripe tomatoes that she dipped in seasoned flour.When these were done,she set them aside,then added chopped onion and green peppers to the skillet and cooked till they were soft.Add some flour to the skillet to make a roux,then add milk, making a gravy.Return the bacon to the gravy,season with salt and pepper. Place the tomatoes on toast,and pour the gravy over it. We couldn't wait for those fresh garden tomatoes every summer,because we knew we were going to be treated to this dish. It wasn't pretty to look at,but it didn't matter.What it lacked in looks,it more than made up for in taste.

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    Replies
    1. that sounds amazing! mind if i steal this recipe?

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  16. This is what we have done for years!

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  17. You had me at Bacon....thinking about adding some chopped hard boiled eggs...Mmmmmmm
    Creamed Bacon and Eggs!

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  18. What I made that's just as good if not better is fried chicken gravy....it's AMAZING. I use store bought fired chicken from the bakery the next day. I take a few pieces of the cold chicken and a little oil in a skillet and refry it to heat it up and get it crunchy again while getting the flavor infused in the oil, then I cut of the chicken skin bredding and all make a regular flour gravy with the oil from the pan flour milk salt and pepper and add the cut up fried chicken...it's SOOOOOOO good.

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    Replies
    1. lol sorry for the typos it's supposed to be fried chicken not fired and cut up the chicken skin breading and all

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    2. Um...it's much better if you fry your own chicken. You just pour off the oil, leaving a couple of tablespoons, scrape the crusty bits off the sides and bottom of the skillet, throw in your flour, salt, and pepper, stir it all up, put in some milk and cook it until it is thickened and bubbly.

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  19. We grew up on milk gravy, we didn't have the money for sausage or bacon most of the time but Mom and grandma always had bacon grease in a metal container from when we could afford the bacon. They both would also make home made biscuits, Just the flavoring of the bacon grease made the gravy oh so good.

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    1. Exactly as you said.....It was made a special gravy, when my mom would slice some tomatoes from the garden into the gravy. You have to allow for the extra moisture from the tomatoes so it doesn't get watery.

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  20. I agree I love bologna gravy, this bacon gravy aint new to us we have been making bacon gravy for years and hamburger gravy is good..whatever meat I fry if I'm going to make gravy I use that meat grease..I'm from WVa and I make gravy a lot through out the week..

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  21. My mother in law use to make this but she used a 1\2 pack of bacon

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  22. Bacon gravy was what I was first exposed to in Oklahoma, where I was born. In my adult years, I discovered to give it more of a "flavor", was to brown the rue (flour & fat). I'm happy to see you have created a recipe that people can have to discover this deletable breakfast gravy. YUM!

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  23. I learned to make gravy from my Mom. She called it saw dust gravy and she'd make it from sausage or bacon or pork chops and sometimes bologna. My husband's favorite meal is pork chops and gravy and tomatoes fresh from the garden or country fried steak. I always use bacon no matter what meat I'm frying. It gives you the extra grease you need and I love to crumble it on top of my biscuits.

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  24. There is nothing more over-used, ever, than "Ya'll"

    Give it a rest.

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    1. Well, here's the thing... a word isn't overused if it's part of your regional dialect. And it's spelled "y'all". Just FYI, if you're going to be a smart ass, it's WAY more effective if you're actually smart about what you're talking about. But thanks for stopping by to spread your sunshine!

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    2. Hot Damm Mandy y'all pass me some Bacon Gravy!!!! I'm from Texas and and we say y'all on a daily basis. I don't know where Anonymous is from, but I'm pretty sure ya'll isn't even a word. I think if y'all are trying to make a point y'all pretty much need to spell it correctly.

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    3. I'm not the 'anonymous' who's being rude and cranky, but let's all show her how nice southerners have been raised to do unto others as we would want others to do unto to us.

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    4. Dear Mommy's Kitchen. Thank y'all. I love you more than ever. By the way y'all, I have heard it called saw mill gravy. And another thing y'all, I grew up with this gravy made from fat back and streak-o-lean. See y'all next time!!

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    5. I probably say y'all at least 200 times a day! That's just how I was raised!

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  25. I make my own bacon and I need to be doing this. We use the bacon grease for making a roux very often. But I have not done a full on "Bacon Gravy" yet. I need to do this soon!

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  26. You have forever changed my breakfast world. Had never heard of bacon gravy...(live out West)...Mr. Picky refuses to even try sausage gravy....but he gobbled this one down because it had the magical word bacon in it.....thank you so much for sharing this recipe!!!! It was soooooo good!!!!!!!

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  27. I wanted to throw in my version of Bacon Gravy. Only difference is that instead of using all milk, you use half milk and half hot water. You can even add a little less milk. Milk makes gravy have a "sweetish" flavor and my family like the more savory flavor, going back through my Mom and her Mom. I am not on any social media sites, so I have used this to sign in. Thanks, Cindy Means

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  28. When I was growing up we saved bacon and sausage grease in the refrigerator just in case we wanted gravy.

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  29. My mother-in-law showed me how to make this for meatless Good Friday dinners. It went like this: A mound of freshly mashed potatoes, topped with a generous amount of shredded lettuce, sliced hard-cooked eggs, and finished off with the delicious bacon gravy. I know it sounds odd, it did to me at first as well, but it is an absolutely delicious and filling dinner entree

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  30. It sounds like old Kentucky bacon gravy to me I was raised on this as well as sausage gravy

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  31. Thank you for making a recipe that actually works! Tastes just like my Manaws. :)

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Hi there! While I’m not able to respond to every comment, I try hard to answer any questions that haven’t been addressed in the post, recipe or in other comments.

I can tell you now 1) I have no idea if you can substitute Minute Rice or brown rice in my recipes because I’ve never used them and 2) If I know how to convert a recipe to a Crock Pot version, I will make a note about it (otherwise, I don’t know).

And though I may not respond to them all, I do read each and every comment and I LOVE to hear from you guys! Thanks, y’all! - Mandy