Easy breakfast gravy, serve over buttermilk biscuits

Ingredients

• 0.5 lbs ground pork (or turkey or game)
• A couple tablespoons of fat (maybe 2?), such as rendered bacon fat or butter
• 0.25 cup finely minced onion
• 0.5 tsp ground sage
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 0.5 teaspoon garlic powder
• 0.25 tsp ground mustard
• 0.25 tsp dried marjoram
• 1 Tbsp maple syrup
• 4 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2.25 cups whole milk
• More salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Add fat and onion into the pan. Cook over medium heat until translucent and no water remains, about 5 minutes.
2. Add meat and seasonings, stirring constantly to break it up. Cook for a few minutes.
3. Add flour and stir until fully coating everything in the pan.
4. Slowly pour in milk, stirring constantly to prevent clumps.
5. Cook until it simmers, then remove from heat. Gravy will thicken as it stands!
6. Taste, adjust salt and pepper as needed, then serve.

Notes

• Shortcut: use ground breakfast sausage instead of ground meat. If you do that, omit or cut down on the seasonings and the fat in the pan as it’ll already have a higher fat content and be pre-seasoned.
• Fat is critical to this dish coming together correctly. If there’s too little, nothing will emulsify and it’ll look like curds and whey. If there’s too much, the excess fat will pool on top. The recipe is pretty forgiving of adding a bit of fat or Wondra flour at the end to make it even out.
• Use real maple syrup, not the fake stuff. The corn syrup based pancake toppings will be too sweet.
• Leftovers reheat fine from the fridge, but do not freeze!