Been watching the Beverly Hillbillies. Do you have a good recipe for Red Eye Gravy? Lots of variations on the 'net. Recipes range from as simple as coffee/ham fat reduction to complexities of chicory, coffee, sugar, butter, onions, flour, yadda yadda.

Is Red Eye Gravy preferred for breakfast or dinner?

Maybe your recipes will be published in Sig Monkeys collection. Lets see 'em!

Red Eye is ham drippings and black coffee. My hillbilly relatives made it from ham fried for breakfast. Then you dipped a cat head biscuit in it. Sometimes you made a ham / biscuit sandwich with it. Damn, could they cook! Ruined me for non southern cooking. Nothing has been the same since I enjoyed it as a kid.
Sorry I don't have the exact recipe.

YooperSigs has got it. You sauté your country ham in a cast iron skillet and then deglaze with black coffee and maybe a little water. A wad of butter at the end doesn't hurt. My granny would add some brown sugar but I don't. It goes good with biscuits and doesn't suck with grits.

You can close the thread. Everything you need to know has been covered.

Coffee, and maybe a little water. Serve over grits. I consider it a breakfast food, good anytime.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
YooperSigs has got it. You sauté your country ham in a cast iron skillet and then deglaze with black coffee and maybe a little water. A wad of butter at the end doesn't hurt. My granny would add some brown sugar but I don't. It goes good with biscuits and doesn't suck with grits.

That is a pretty powerful image, Jim. From your kitchen?

Good stuff! also goes nice with a couple of over easy eggs along with those grits.

According to my copy of White Trash Cooking:

"After cooking the breakfast meat (bacon, ham, or sausage), remove it from the iron skillet and put it aside. To the drippins, pour 1/3 cup of strong coffee and stir while on the fire. Pour over hot grits or sop up with hot biscuits."

I highly recommend this cookbook/backroads travelogue. It's a blast to read and the photos capture a rural South that is rapidly being lost.

Damn, that looks good! Haven't had red eye gravy in years!

Cured ham, biscuits, and red eye gravy is the food of the gods. Ambrosia is for chumps.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
YooperSigs has got it. You sauté your country ham in a cast iron skillet and then deglaze with black coffee and maybe a little water. A wad of butter at the end doesn't hurt. My granny would add some brown sugar but I don't. It goes good with biscuits and doesn't suck with grits.

That is a pretty powerful image, Jim. From your kitchen?

Nope, Google Images. I've got some grits on the stove right now though. (We've got snow here and it's as cold as a brass bra.)

"It's so good, you'll wanna lay down and scream"