3 Tablespoons Dairy Butter or Corn Oil

2 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour

1 can Eagle Brand, Carnation or other quality brand Evaporated Milk

Kosher or Sea Salt to taste

1 teaspoon freshly cracked Black Pepper (could use less or omitted)

Water rinsed from milk can to thin gravy with.

I recommend using a well seasoned iron skillet for best flavors and results, but use what you have!

Pour in oil or slowly melt butter (do not brown!) in the skillet on low heat, add the flour by sprinkling over the warming oil or butter. Mix around making sure to mash out all the flour lumps. A fork is great to speed this along. Keep this stirring around, don't leave it to yack on the phone or something else, it needs to be attended.

This cooking flour roux mixture is not supposed to cook for very long, as it may brown a bit too much to make a white cream gravy. But a little tan is ok.

Once the flour roux mixture has cooked until tan to a creamy white color (a couple of minutes), remove skillet from heat, keep stirring for a minute or two until cooled a bit.

Add about 1/2 teaspoon Kosher or Sea Salt, stir to dissolve. Slowly pour in about 1/4 cup canned evaporated milk, keep this stirring, don't stop. It will begin to thicken right away, keep stirring and add more evaporated milk until the can is empty. Don't stop stirring, make sure all the lumps are being stirred out and dissolved until it's as smooth possible.

Return the skillet to low to medium heat, keep stirring constantly, add more water (or chicken stock!) to thin this to your preference as it simmers. It must be stirred constantly until it finishes thickening, or it will form a solid mass on the bottom of the skillet, and possibly scorch. If you must leave the skillet, remove it from heat and cover with a lid.

This may be too thick for your uses, this is when to add milk or the water you rinsed from the evaporated milk can. Add little bits of water while stirring constantly, keep doing that on low heat until the gravy is thickened to the consistency you want.

It's hard for me to say "add 'this amount' or 'that amount'" as no two people are exactly the same on how thick or thin they like any sauce or gravy. It's simple: more flour and less liquids makes a thicker sauce or gravy. More liquids to less flour makes a thinner sauce or gravy. Go with what *you* like.

This gravy is cooked until it's had about 10 - 15 minutes simmering and stirring. Cooking times and temps will be altogether different for folks living at higher altitudes than I do. So do what my old folks always taught me: cook by sight, smell, taste and feel.

If you want this to smell and taste like the cream gravy diners make, freshly grind the black pepper straight into the cooked gravy, and serve while it's still fragrant, don't cook the black pepper in the gravy. The pepper won't have as much flavor after it's cooked a bit. The best flavors happen when it's freshly ground.

My folks on occasion used heavy cream instead of evaporated milk. I've grown up with this made with both canned, evaporated milk and whole milk.

Bacon grease was the fat used on weekend mornings, instead of butter or corn oil, as the folks had just sizzled up some bacon as part of our breakfast.

Sausage Gravy is exactly the same recipe as this, except for starting with a good brand of pork pan sausage that's been either pan fried and broken up into pieces as it cooks. Or use 3/4 cup water to 1/2 pound pan sausage. Break up the ground sausage in the water as it warms up, then add flour to that mixture once the sausage is fully cooked. Then add milk to make it a creamy sausage gravy.

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Alternate Methods

When I'm out of milk, I've poured powdered coffee creamer into the water being used in making a cream gravy. It does well when you're out of milk and tastes oh so good! Be sure it's plain powdered coffee creamer, and not the sweetened, flavored ones, like Irish Cream, Chocolate, Hazelnut, etc.

It doesn't matter very much which kind of dairy milk is used. That I remember, I've never had "milk gravy" or cream gravy made with buttermilk, and never with sweetened condensed milk whatsoever. However, canned evaporated milk, half and half, heavy cream, goat milk, whole milk and (occasionally) skim milk were always used to make cream gravy in our home. Skim or any form of defatted milk will not make a creamy gravy as will milk that has fat.

The best cream gravies I've made had at least 1/2 cup to 1 cup chicken stock in it, as well as evaporated milk, or whole milk, or goat milk, and occasionally heavy cream.

Cream gravy is an essential ingredient for topping chicken fried steaks, chicken strips, steak fingers, or to go with mashed potatoes, for morning toast dipping. If you want a good sauce to use inside a chicken pot pie, cream gravy does extremely well for that too.