Family Recipe: Ham and Cream Gravy

Growing up, there were a handful of family favorites that would be requested over and over. Some of them, like liver and onions, made me groan at every mention. Needless to say, you'll never see a blog post from me about trying a liver and onion recipe. The mention of others was truly comforting. My mama's ham gravy, and sometimes sausage if she wasn't feeling like it was a ham day, was something everyone loved. We never had this for breakfast, although in retrospect, it would have been perfect for it. Instead, it was a hearty supper on the days my mom would make biscuits and ham gravy!

When I was looking through her recipe box, I was actually surprised to find a recipe for it. I had assumed it was one of those things that she just had in her head (I've encountered quite a few of those in my adult life as I tried to get her to share her recipes for things like borscht and stuffing). This made the card a find, but as I read through it, I realized it was a very big find.

After the recipe, there an extra note that my mom wrote:

"I use whole milk (not 1%, 2%, or fat free). It is even better if you replace a cup of milk with a cup of cream. (When we lived on the farm, mom replaced most of the milk with cream)."

This one paragraph meant that it was not only a family favorite for my family, it had been a family favorite for my mom's family (and I would guess that probably was not the end of that story). Also, "the farm" was my mother's favorite place of all time. Her demeanor and even the sound of her voice changes whenever she starts talking about the place where her family lived through the Depression. While others were struggling to survive they had fresh eggs and milk with cream and even animals to butcher. There are so many treasured memories there that her sister even commissioned an artist to paint the house from an old black and white photograph, complete with barking dog on the front steps.

When I made this recipe, I decided to go the whole mile and use the cream. This was not something my mother did, or if she did, she didn't do it very often. The full cream made the meal even heartier, and super tasty. However, I think I would prefer to do half cream and half milk. We chopped up a ham I had gotten on discount, where I know my mom used to just use thin slices of deli ham.

For the biscuits, I used Mary B's Buttermilk Biscuits - these frozen biscuits cook up like homemade. David and I learned about them while on a weekend getaway where the property owner left biscuits in the freezer and homemade peach jam in the fridge for her guests. The mix of homemade(ish) biscuits and thick, creamy gravy were a delight. Because of the weight of the meal, one batch fed six of us.

I'm not going to post the nutrition information - in part because it really depends on a lot of factors. But the other reason is - this just isn't the kind of recipe that you really want to know the nutrition information for! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

3 T. butter
2 c. chopped ham (12 oz.)
3 T. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper (next time I'm adding more pepper to make it a peppered gravy)
2 1/4 c. milk

Instructions:

1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Add ham and cook over medium heat until ham is light brown.
2. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper. Add milk all at once. (Note: we shook these ingredients together and added them - I'm pretty sure that's what Mom did, too).
3. Cook and stir over medium heat until thick and bubbly. Cook and stir for one minute more.

Makes 3 1/4 cups.