1/2 pound Pan Sausage

1/2 tsp Kosher or Sea Salt

1 teaspoon (more or less) Fresh Cracked or Ground Black Pepper

1/4 cup all purpose Flour

1 can Evaporated Milk

Added Milk or Water to thin the gravy with.

In a heavy skillet, fry and break up the pan sausage, making sure to leave a few larger chunks. (some folks want the sausage broken up in tiny pieces too).

Once there's no more pink meat, spoon off all but 3-4 tablespoons of the rendered fat. Over that and the sausage sprinkle all the flour. Stir and fry the flour until it's a light cream-tan color, then take from heat a moment.

Add the can of evaporated milk to the skillet and keep this stirred constantly as it will begin thickening up right away. Return skillet to the heat, stir constantly.

Fill the empty can with water, swish it around to dissolve the milk solids, and add some water gradually as the gravy thickens, if needed. Only add what's needed to prevent the gravy becoming too thick, you may or may not need all of it. Simmer this about 15 minutes stirring constantly. Add water or milk to thin it, if needed. Add the black pepper last of all and stir in well.

Cover and set off the heat while cooking whatever else you want to serve this with. The sawmill gravy will thicken slightly after it's been cooked.

I like sawmill gravy served over hash browns or another type of pan fried potatoes, or spooned over thick slices of dry Texas Toast or over white rice.

I'm not a huge fan of serving sawmill gravy over biscuits, but that *is* a really huge thing in the South. Where I grew up in Texas, people wanted this or cream gravy over their breakfast ham and eggs as well.

Variations:

Use any type of ground meat instead of pork pan sausage, such as ground chuck, ground venison or elk pan sausage. Fried and torn up bacon is also used in place of pork sausage. Leftover pork or beef roast cut into dices is also a variant.

Chipped Beef is pretty much identical to this recipe except for using lightly browned thin, wafer-cut beef sandwich meat, or broken up dried beef instead of pan sausage. Chipped Beef is typically served over toast where I grew up.