Chocolate Gravy

“I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”

- Erma Bombeck

This is no more true than when the gravy happens to be of the chocolate variety.  I want to set your mind at ease right now:  this is not chocolate flavored meat gravy!  This is like pourable, drinkable, soak-inable pudding...only better.  You can make it as chocolatey as you please, and it is just as good served for breakfast as it is served as a midnight snack.  This is not my personal recipe; I do not know where the recipe originated.  It is a southern/mountain thang, and it is so good you'll wonder why you ever bothered with that sausage stuff.  This recipe is taken from the very last page (318) in the Mountain Recipe Collection By Valeria S. Ison.  This is one of my mom's favorite cookbooks, so in '94 or '95 she bought me an autographed copy, "Best wishes Amanda."  Some of our best loved recipes are within these pages, and Chocolate Gravy is no exception.  Try it once, and you will quickly understand the addiction.

The first thing you need to do is head over to Blue Ribbon Buttermilk Biscuits, and make a batch.  While they are baking, you can get the gravy done.  We always do a double (sometimes triple!) batch, because a single batch is barely enough for 2 biscuits to swim in, and you're going to have a dozen or so waiting for their turn in the wading pool.  Following is the recipe as it appears in the cookbook.

Chocolate Gravy

3 level Tbsp. flour

1/2 C. sugar

1 Tbsp. butter

1 Tbsp. cocoa (heaping)

1-1/2 C. liquid or 1 C. milk and 1/2 C. water

Mix flour, cocoa and sugar.  Add milk and cook until thick.  Stir in butter.

NOTE: Mam (grandmother) always served chocolate gravy for breakfast when we were there.

Double Batch

6 level Tb flour

1 cup sugar

2 Tb butter

2-3 Tb unsweetened cocoa powder (heaping - definitely!)

3 cups milk

1. Mix dry ingredients together in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Using a whisk or fork, incorporate all the dry ingredients and try to work out most of the lumps of flour. 

2. Add the milk, and stir until the dry ingredients are mixed in.  The gravy will be very thin and foamy at this point. *It works best to stir in about 1/3-1/2c milk at a time and incorporate that.  It produces a gravy with less lumps at the beginning, which means less time spent trying to smoosh lumps out as you stir.*

3. Turn on the stove cap, and heat on medium-high until the gravy has thickened to the desired consistency.  This will take some time.  The first thing you will notice is the foam from the whisking of the milk disappears.  If you see flour lumps at this point, do not be alarmed.  They will most likely all dissolve by the time the gravy is thickened.  If there are a few stubborn lumps, just smoosh them up against the side of the pan, and then stir them in.

If you are familiar with the density of gravy as it is being stirred, you will recognize when the gravy is getting close to done just by the way your spoon feels as you stir.  If, however, you are a newbie to making gravy or thickened sauces, you might want to periodically scoop a spoonful and pour it back into the pan to see if it is thickened enough to be gravy or if it is still chocolate milk.

4. Once the gravy has thickened to the consistency you prefer, immediately remove it from the heat and add the butter.  Stir the gravy until all the butter has melted and disappeared.  Serve it immediately over freshly baked Blue Ribbon Buttermilk Biscuits...or drink it as Ms. Bombeck suggests!

I apologize for the absence of a picture of a biscuit smothered in chocolate gravy.  I was so hungry and anxious to eat that I forgot to document the finished product.  I will try to remember to snap a picture soon and get it up here for all you soon-to-be chocolate gravy lovers.

This oversight was corrected on Dec 12, 2013 :)