Camp Sausage Gravy
Pork, flour, and powdered milk in one skillet. Poured over whatever bread you brought.
- calories
- 390
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 87
- protein
- 17 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- 700 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Campfire coals
- Grill grate
- Canister stove
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Ground pork sausage | 1 lb | seasoned bulk sausage saves you the spice kit |
|---|---|---|
| Butter | 2 tbsp | keeps in a cooler; ghee or oil works without one |
| All-purpose flour | 1/3 cup | measured into a bag at home |
| Whole milk powder | 1 cup | reconstitutes to about 3 cups |
| Water | 3 cups | |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste | be heavier on the pepper than feels right |
Method
- Set the skillet over a grate or a moderate flame. Break up the sausage and cook it through, 8 to 15 minutes, stirring so it browns instead of steams.
- Leave the fat in the pan. Add the butter and stir until it melts into the meat.
- Dust the flour over everything and stir for a full minute. The flour should look wet and disappear into the fat, not sit on top as dry powder.
- Whisk the milk powder into 3 cups of water in a bottle or second pot, then pour it in slowly while stirring.
- Simmer and stir 8 minutes until it coats the spoon. Add more water a splash at a time if it goes past gravy into paste.
- Salt and pepper at the end, since the sausage already brought salt. Spoon over biscuits, bread, or leftover potatoes.
Sausage gravy is a roux problem, and the roux is the only step that can actually fail out here. The flour needs a minute in hot fat before any liquid arrives, or you get raw-flour taste and lumps that no amount of stirring fixes. Cook the meat, keep the drippings, add butter to make up the difference, then flour, then liquid — in that order, every time.
The camp change is the milk. Fresh milk is a cooler liability and a spill risk, so this uses whole milk powder reconstituted in the pot. Whole, not skim: the fat is doing structural work, and skim gravy is thin and chalky. Everything but the sausage is shelf-stable, so with a precooked pouch this drops off the cooler list entirely.
Packing
Flour, milk powder, salt, and pepper go in one bag together at home so camp is two pours instead of four measurements. Sausage stays frozen in the cooler and gets cooked day one or two.
Variations
- Precooked crumbled sausage from a sealed pouch skips the cooler entirely and cuts ten minutes.
- A spoonful of instant potato flakes rescues gravy that refuses to thicken.
- Rice or fried potatoes underneath instead of biscuits keeps it gluten-lighter and travels better than bread.
https://campfirefoodie.com/skillet-sausage-gravy-recipe