Red Eye Gravy
Salty ham drippings deglazed with strong black coffee, thin as broth and sharp as anything, with no flour in sight.
- Contains meat
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- coffee
- breakfast
- no flour
- southern
- Prep
- 2 min
- Cook
- 8 min
- Total
- 10 min
- Serves
- 2
- Difficulty
- Easy
Red eye gravy is one of the oldest tricks in Southern cooking and it makes most people suspicious the first time they read the ingredients. There is no thickening at all. You fry a slice of salty cured ham, throw a mug of coffee into the hot pan and scrape up everything that stuck. What you get is thin, bitter, salty and oddly brilliant spooned over grits or a split scone.
Ingredients
Makes about 200ml, enough for two plates
Scaled amounts are rounded to something you can actually measure. Season at the end and trust your mouth over the maths.
Kit
- Heavy frying pan
- Wooden spoon
- Small jug
Method
Trim the fat from the edge of the gammon and drop it into a cold heavy frying pan. Set it over a medium heat and let the fat render for three or four minutes until you have a shallow film of it. If your ham is lean, add the lard instead.
Lay the ham slices in the hot fat and fry for two to three minutes a side. You are after dark brown patches and a proper crust, not gentle warming. Lift the ham out onto a warm plate and keep it somewhere warm.
Look at the pan. There should be sticky brown fond glued to the base and a tablespoon or two of fat. That fond is the entire flavour of the gravy, so if the pan is pale you have not fried the ham hard enough.
Pour in the coffee, standing back because it will spit. Bring it straight to the boil and scrape hard at the base with a wooden spoon until every brown patch has lifted into the liquid.
Add the water and the brown sugar if using, and let the lot bubble for three to four minutes. It will reduce by about a quarter and darken. It should stay thin enough to run off a spoon, because that is the whole character of this gravy.
Taste it. It should be salty from the ham, slightly bitter from the coffee and savoury underneath. Add black pepper. It will almost never need salt.
Pour it straight into a small warm jug and serve alongside the ham, over grits, mashed potato or a split savoury scone.
Tips worth knowing
- Do not try to thicken this. Red eye gravy is meant to be thin, closer to a broth than a sauce, and a spoon of flour turns it into a muddy coffee sauce that nobody enjoys.
- The saltiness comes entirely from the ham, so use a proper dry cured gammon rather than a wet cured supermarket steak, which will leach water into the pan instead of browning.
- Coffee that has been sitting on a hot plate for an hour goes stale and acrid, and that bitterness carries straight through. Fresh coffee, brewed strong, is worth the two minutes.
- If the pan catches and goes black rather than brown at any point, wash it out and start again. Burnt fond makes the whole gravy taste like ash.
Change it up
- Swap half the coffee for beef stock for a softer, rounder version that suits people who find the straight coffee too sharp.
- Add a teaspoon of cider vinegar with the water for a more acidic gravy that cuts through fatty ham even harder.
- Stir in a knob of butter off the heat, which is not traditional but gives the gravy a little more body and gloss.
Keeping and reheating
Best made and eaten immediately. It will keep for two days in the fridge but the coffee turns sour and dull on reheating, so make it fresh rather than in advance. It does not freeze usefully.
Questions people ask
Why is it called red eye gravy?
The common story is that a reddish ring of fat forms in the middle of the gravy in the pan and looks like a bloodshot eye. Other versions credit a cook making it for a bleary eyed general. Nobody has ever settled it, and the name has stuck either way.
What can I use instead of American country ham?
A thick cut dry cured gammon steak is the nearest thing in a British supermarket. Look for something properly salty and dry rather than wet cured, and do not soak it, because the salt is the point. A slice of proper air dried ham fried hard also works.
Does red eye gravy taste like coffee?
Yes, but not like a cup of coffee. Once it has boiled with the ham fat and the pan scrapings it turns savoury and slightly bitter, much closer to a very dark beef juice than to a drink. If you want it milder, cut the coffee with stock.