The Traditional Southern Gravy Packed With Hard-Boiled Eggs

While most of us associate the word "gravy" with the meaty sauce we spoon over roasted turkey come Thanksgiving, in the American South, gravy is an intrinsic part of everyday culinary life. This cuisine slathers rich gravies over such varied meals as chicken-fried steak, sausage biscuits, and roast beef po'boys (via Blue Plate Mayonnaise), and according to Southern Living, there are quite a few varieties of southern-style gravies. There's tomato gravy, tomatoes stewed down thickly with butter and often served over grits; red-eye gravy, a famous breakfast gravy that utilizes bacon or ham drippings and a little leftover coffee; and even a surprising sweet chocolate gravy that's commonly draped over fresh biscuits.

And there's another southern gravy you might not have heard of, but will want to try soon if you like hard-boiled eggs. It's called, well, southern egg gravy, and it utilizes pan drippings, flour, and the aforementioned eggs.

So you've roasted a chicken or turkey and now you want a nice pan sauce to spoon over it. If you're tired of your standard recipe for gravy, why not whip up a classically southern egg gravy, instead? According to The Spruce Eats, the white-style gravy utilizing poultry giblets and fat as well as all-purpose flour is a tasty deviation from typical gravy. It's made by simmering the bird's giblets down in water, chopping them up, and folding them into a roux-based gravy made with the bird's fat and the stock from the giblets. Finally, chopped hard-boiled eggs are stirred in and the gravy is ready to go.

In an ode to egg gravy she penned for Delish, writer Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton remembers egg gravy as a quotidian part of her southern upbringing — but at breakfast, spooned over hot biscuits or toast. Calling the gravy a "southern family secret," Boyanton recalls sprinting out of bed on the occasions when her mother plated up not oatmeal, toast, or fruit, but a steaming dish of egg gravy. Though her family now makes the dish on special occasions only, Boyanton writes, "When I dig into my plate of egg gravy, that first bite still tastes like reverence."