Hardee's
Hardee's Buttermilk Biscuit Copycat Recipe
Grated frozen butter, a folded dough, and a cutter pressed straight down. Twenty-five minutes from a standing start.
How to Make Hardee's Sausage Gravy at Home
White Gravy: a Roux Built in Sausage Fat, With Far More Pepper Than Seems Reasonable
The gravy that makes biscuits worth getting up for, and the pepper quantity nobody believes.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
Biscuits and gravy is one of the great cheap breakfasts and the gravy half is the part people get wrong, usually in the same two ways: not enough pepper, and a roux built in butter rather than in the sausage's own rendered fat.
This is a white gravy - a béchamel, technically - which is a distinct thing from the dark roux gravies elsewhere on this site. There is no browning at all: the roux is cooked only until the raw flour taste has gone, about two minutes, and stays pale.
And the pepper is not a seasoning here, it is an ingredient. A teaspoon and a half of coarse black pepper in 900 ml of gravy, which looks alarming going in and is the correct amount.
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Why the roux goes in the sausage fat
Brown the sausage first, in a dry pan, breaking it up fine. It will render three or four tablespoons of fat, and that fat is the recipe.
It carries everything the sausage has released - the sage, the pepper, the browned meat compounds - and building the roux in it puts all of that into the gravy. Pour it away and build a roux in butter and you have a pleasant béchamel with sausage in it, which is a different and lesser breakfast.
How much fat you need: three tablespoons for three of flour. If your sausage is lean and has not rendered enough, top it up with butter; if it has rendered too much, pour some off. Do not leave six tablespoons in - the gravy will be greasy.
Scrape the base as the flour goes in. The browned residue stuck to the pan is the most concentrated flavour in the dish and it lifts as soon as the milk arrives.
The two-minute roux, and why this one stays pale
Unlike the KFC gravy or the Jollibee one, which want a roux cooked to peanut-butter brown, this one stays blond.
Two minutes over a medium heat, stirring. Long enough for the flour to stop tasting raw and pasty, not long enough for it to colour.
There are two reasons. A white gravy is meant to be white - a browned roux makes it beige and it looks wrong on a plate. And a blond roux has considerably more thickening power than a dark one, which is why this recipe uses three tablespoons of flour to 900 ml of liquid where a dark gravy would need four.
Add the milk warm and in stages. Cold milk into a hot roux is the classic route to lumps. Three additions, whisking each one smooth before the next.
How to make it, step by step
Make it
-
Season the pork and brown it hard, breaking it fine
Dry pan, medium-high heat. Mix the sage, salt, white pepper, sugar and cayenne through the mince first with a fork - briefly, do not knead it. Then brown it, breaking it up continuously.
About 8 min -
Adjust the fat to about three tablespoons
Pour some off if there is a lot; add butter if there is little. This ratio is what decides whether the gravy is rich or greasy.
About 1 min -
Flour in, stirred for two minutes, scraping the base
It will coat the sausage and look dry and pasty. Keep it moving. It must stay pale.
About 2 min -
Warm milk in three additions, whisking each smooth
The first will seize and look wrong. Keep whisking and it comes together before the next goes in.
About 3 min -
Simmer four minutes, then all the pepper
It will thicken noticeably. Then the black pepper, the nutmeg and salt to taste. Taste for pepper twice - it should leave a warm bite.
About 5 min
It thickens as it stands, and how to bring it back
A flour-thickened gravy keeps thickening off the heat, and this one will be noticeably stiffer ten minutes after it leaves the pan than it was in it.
Make it slightly looser than you want. If it has gone too far, warm milk a splash at a time, whisked in over a low heat. It comes straight back and you can do this as many times as you need.
The same applies to reheating. Straight from the fridge it will be a solid paste, which is correct - a splash of milk and a low heat turns it back into gravy in two minutes.
Do not add cold milk to a hot gravy in one go; it shocks the starch and can go lumpy. Small additions, whisking.
Ways to change it once you have made it once
With bacon instead
Six rashers of streaky bacon, chopped and crisped, with the roux built in the bacon fat. Smokier and excellent.
Vegetarian
Butter for the fat and 250 g of chestnut mushrooms browned hard and chopped fine in place of the sausage, plus half a teaspoon of yeast extract for depth.
Thinner, for pouring over a plate
Drop the flour to 2½ tbsp. Better over eggs and hash browns than over biscuits.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
Lumpy
- Why it happened
- Cold milk into a hot roux, or added too fast.
- What to do
- A stick blender fixes it in five seconds. Warm milk in three additions next time.
It tastes of flour
- Why it happened
- The roux was not cooked for the full two minutes.
- What to do
- Two minutes, stirring, before any liquid. There is no fix afterwards.
Greasy
- Why it happened
- Too much rendered fat left in the pan.
- What to do
- Three tablespoons for three of flour. Pour the rest off.
Bland
- Why it happened
- Under-peppered, which is almost always the answer.
- What to do
- Another half teaspoon of coarse black pepper. It should bite.
It went beige
- Why it happened
- The roux was cooked too long.
- What to do
- Two minutes only. This is a white gravy.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Why is it called white gravy?
Because the roux is not browned. It is a béchamel made in sausage fat rather than butter, and it stays pale by design.
How much pepper should go in?
A teaspoon and a half of coarse black pepper in 900 ml. It looks alarming and it is the correct amount.
Can I use shop sausages?
Yes - squeeze four or five out of their skins. Look for a sage-forward one, or add a teaspoon of dried sage.
Why does it go solid in the fridge?
Flour-thickened sauces set when cold. A splash of milk and a low heat brings it straight back.
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