There's No Law Against Making Sausage Gravy With Italian Sausage

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain, and I fear I am entering my villain era. Not intentionally, but my brain seems to be gravitating towards stranger and stranger things. Take this dish, which would be considered “a big crime” both by people from the American South and Italians, two cultures with proud traditions of getting mad about food.

Oh well.

Though the beauty of most Southern (and, honestly, Italian) dishes lies in their simplicity, it is still fun to play around with those elegant arrangements and make something delightfully fucked up. (Indeed, when I took a bit of my Italian sausage gravy, which I served (to myself) on garlic bread, I said “That’s fucked up,” but I was smiling when I said it.)

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Italian sausage gravy on garlic bread tastes very good, because how could it not? Besides pork breakfast sausage, the only other ingredients—flour and milk—are the epitome of neutral, and swapping out one kind of sausage for another creates no dissonance on the palate—not even a little. Does this mean you could use any sausage with a similar fat content and consistency to make sausage gravy? It does. (I’ll leave you to experiment.)

Italian sausage gravy is creamy, salty, fatty, meaty, and a little spicy, with the usual seasonings you would expect from such a sausage (garlic, red pepper, fennel, etc.). It wouldn’t be bad on a biscuit, but maybe a little off, vibe-wise, so I suggest going he garlic bread route. There are many ways to make garlic bread, but I think your best bet is toasting some Italian bread with butter or olive oil, then rubbing a halved raw garlic clove all over the crispy top. (Garlic salt might be a bit too salty when paired with the sausage, especially if your butter is salted, too.)

Like any sausage gravy, this one is very easy to make. There is literally no difference in method (which we have covered before), but here’s a quick refresher.

Italian Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of your favorite, flavorful breakfast sausage meat (not links or patties)

• 1/3 cup flour

• 2 1/2-3 cups of whole milk

Brown your sausage in a large pan over medium-high heat. Once all the pink is gone and you’ve got a little bit of color on there, slowly sprinkle on the flour, stirring constantly so the sausage gets evenly coated. Cook another minute, then slowly pour in your milk while stirring until you have a thick and luscious gravy. Give it a taste, doctor it red pepper flake or garlic salt if needed, then spoon onto your favorite garlic bread and garnish with fresh Italian parsley.