One Pan Sausage Gravy

Sausages give up a surprising amount of fat and a whole lot of stuck on brown residue, and both of those are free flavour if you do not wash them down the sink. This is bangers and mash gravy made in the sausage pan while the sausages sit resting, which is exactly how it should be done and takes no extra time at all.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four platefuls of bangers and mash

• 8 pork sausages the fattier the better for this
• 1 onion sliced
• 1 tbsp (15g) plain flour
• 400ml (14fl oz) hot beef or chicken stock
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce contains anchovy
• 1 tsp English mustard
• black pepper to taste

Kit

• Large frying pan
• Wooden spoon
• Whisk
• Measuring jug

Method

1. Fry the sausages in a large frying pan over a medium heat, turning every couple of minutes, for about twelve to fourteen minutes until browned all over and firm. Do not have the heat too high, you want the fat to render out slowly rather than the skins to scorch.

2. Lift the sausages onto a warm plate and cover them loosely with foil. Look at the pan. There should be a couple of tablespoons of fat and a scatter of dark brown stuck on bits. That brown is the gravy.

3. Tip out any fat over about two tablespoons, then add the sliced onion to the pan and turn the heat to medium. Fry for five minutes, stirring and scraping, until the onion softens and picks up the brown residue from the base.

4. Sprinkle over the flour and stir it through the oniony fat. Cook for a minute so the flour loses its raw edge.

5. Pour in a splash of the hot stock and scrape the base of the pan firmly with a wooden spoon. Everything stuck on should lift off in the liquid, which is the whole point of deglazing. Keep scraping until the base is clean.

6. Add the rest of the stock, whisking to break up any flour lumps, then bring it to a simmer and cook for four minutes until it thickens enough to coat a spoon.

7. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and mustard, then pour in any juices that have collected under the resting sausages. Grind in pepper, taste, and only then think about salt. Sausages are salty and so is stock.

8. Return the sausages to the pan for the last thirty seconds so they come back up to temperature and pick up a coat of gravy before serving.

Tips worth knowing

• Cheap sausages give up more water and less fat. If the pan looks wet rather than oily, keep frying for another two minutes with the sausages out of the way so the liquid boils off and the browning can start.
• Do not add the flour to a pan swimming in fat. Two tablespoons of fat to one of flour is about right, and any more than that leaves the gravy greasy.
• The juices that leak out of the resting sausages are concentrated and worth having. Tip the whole plateful in at the end.
• If your sausages are very herby or peppery, ease off the mustard, as the two can fight.

Keeping and reheating

Three days in the fridge, ideally stored separately from the sausages so they do not go soggy. Freezes for three months. Reheat in a pan with a splash of water.

Questions people ask