Waffling over what to make for dinner? We recommend waffles with sausage gravy. If you are using our recipe for overnight waffles (found in our recipe index) you will need to stir them up in the morning so they develop that lovely yeasty, slightly tangy quality, which also makes this meal super easy to produce when suppertime rolls around.
Waffles are extremely versatile, and you can dress them up any way you’d like! You don’t have to serve sausage gravy with them, but why wouldn’t you? Bonus: when the family has lapped up the last of the gravy, remaining waffles can become dessert when topped with butter, syrup, and blueberries or saved for breakfast the next day (making your breakfast for dinner a breakfast for dinner breakfast.)
Sausage Gravy
1 pound ground breakfast sausage
1 tablespoon butter
2-3 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
2-3 tablespoons cream (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper
Over medium-high heat, brown sausage. When brown, remove sausage to paper towel lined plate, reserving grease. Add butter to grease in pan, reduce heat to medium, and melt butter. Add flour to butter to form paste. Cook and stir a minute or two. Add milk, half a cup at a time, heating to near simmer between each addition. Continue stirring to form smooth gravy. Add cream, if desired, and lots of pepper. Add sausage back to pan, stirring it into gravy. Serve over hot biscuits or waffles.
This week’s installment of “Ben Bucks the System” had to do with what he would wear for our cooking session/photo shoot. Since we were stirring up the batter in the morning, he wanted to be photographed in his pajamas, which are strictly family grade garments. Not bloggable. He did comply and get dressed before we started cooking, but I noticed his athletic shorts were on inside out. His interest in correcting the error was low, but I leveraged the promise of sausage gravy to close the deal.
Ben was given what he calls a “tank top” (t-shirt with cut-off sleeves) months ago. Any casual observer would tell you that it was not flattering, but he felt like a million bucks in it. Was I sad when a laundry mishap of Ben’s own making did it in? No, but Ben has been seeking tank top restitution ever since. He bought a 3-pack of thin, ribbed, cotton undershirts for tie-dying (yes, you may know them as wife-beaters) and was not happy when we banned him from wearing them outside the house. They leave nothing to the imagination. Those have become his pajama shirts, a status he disputes, and is constantly seeking to change. I have no idea what the appeal is for him, and he can’t fathom our objections, and so we play our parent-child roles in scenes that have been repeating in some form for thousands of years. (“You are not leaving this cave in that skimpy loin cloth!”)
Our waffles were definitely dressed for success, and ultimately Ben was too.