When I started learning how to cook, I wanted to learn how to make gravy. I'd heard that making gravy is hard to get right: it can turn out lumpy, or never git thick. While that may be true for brown gravy, it isn't the case for white gravy. I don't know where I found this recipe, but it is drop dead simple, and fool proof.

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp Butter (1/2 stick)
• 4 Tbsp White Flour
• 2.5 Cup Milk
• 1 - 2 tsp salt
• 1 - 2 tsp pepper (optional)

Steps

All you have to do is make a roux and add milk. Then salt it until it tastes good.

1. Melt butter
2. Add flour
3. Stir for a few minutes. You want to let the roux get bubbly. It will smell like your making pie crust.
4. Whisk in milk. Just stir while you pour the milk in so that the roux completely dissolves.
5. Heat on low-med until it gets thick. You don't have to stir constantly, but you need to stir occasionally so it does not burn.
6. Add salt until it tastes good. This is the hardest part. If you don't put in enough salt, it will taste very bland and floury. If you put to much in, it will be... to salty. I never measure the salt out, but my salt spoon is about 1/2 tsp, and I usually ad 2 - 3 spoonfuls.
7. Add some pepper if you want.

And that's it. It takes about 20 minutes to make, and is great on mashed potatoes. If you brown a pound of hamburger, mix in this gravy, and pour it on a biscuit, you've got old-fashioned biscuits and gravy.

Conclusion

I haven't found a biscuit recipe that I can make very consistently yet, but if you lookup the recipe for a biscuit, you find that it is basically butter, flour, milk, and salt, with some sort of leavening agent like baking powder thrown in sometimes. I always thought it was funny that biscuits and gravy is basically liquid biscuits on top of solid biscuits.

As I started to learn more about cooking, I found that many gravies and sauces have the same basic recipe. You need a fat, which might be butter, vegetable oil, or even olive oil. You add a starch, which is usually flour or corn starch. And then you add a liquid, which could be milk, butter milk, cream, chicken broth, beef broth, whatever. And of course, you need salt.