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The day after Thanksgiving I helped my mother-in-law Sharon prepare breakfast. She was making sausage gravy and cathead biscuits and I was making chocolate gravy using her recipe, one that was given to her by an elderly friend, now deceased. The recipe card is aged and smudged, and I asked what the first ingredient, oleo, is.
“That’s margarine,” she said with a smile over the biscuits she was mixing. “When you get a recipe from an older person, they might write ‘oleo’ because that’s what they used to call it.”
Learning new terms and new recipes has been part of the experience for me since moving to Arkansas. I had lived here six years before I finally tried chocolate gravy for the first time. It was a recipe by a co-worker, Susan Bittle. She was a talented cook, so I felt safe trying her chocolate gravy: it was lightly sweet and not too thick, and the way its irresistible cocoa flavor blanketed buttery biscuits made my taste buds rejoice. Soon after, another co-worker, Zach Durham, shared his easy chocolate gravy recipe with me. This is a microwave recipe his father developed to satisfy an immediate demand for chocolate gravy.
I now look back on years of missed chocolate gravy consumption. Take my experience as your cautionary tale: try chocolate gravy today.
Susan says her recipe comes from Taste of Home:
- 4 tablespoons cocoa
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 ½ cup milk
Mix cocoa and sugar and set aside. Melt butter in medium saucepan. Add flour and cook but don’t allow to brown. Add sugar and cocoa mixture. Slowly pour in milk. Mix well and let cook for 3-5 minutes or until thickened.
Zach’s recipe for fast chocolate gravy:
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 tablespoons flour
- 1 tablespoon cocoa
- Pinch of salt
- 1 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 tablespoons butter
Mix together dry ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl. Add the milk and stir until thoroughly mixed. Microwave for two minutes, remove and stir. Continue microwaving in one-minute increments until the desired consistency is reached; stir in the vanilla and butter.
Serve the gravy over hot buttered biscuits. It should serve 4-6 people, but a little goes a long way.
What was your first experience with chocolate gravy?
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Greatest thing I had ever put in my mouth. Wouldn’t go to church without raising cane. Mom either had to spank us boys or make chocolate gravy.