14 Regional Gravy Styles You'll Find Across The U.S.

Every Thanksgiving, our turkey and mashed potatoes get slathered with an unctuous heap of steaming brown gravy. Its umami-rich flavor and velvety texture help to moisten a turkey and tie the entire meal together, uniting the ingredients while establishing a sense of time and place. It is a practical and versatile food that has evolved to accommodate locally available resources and to highlight ethnic and cultural differences.

Gravy refers to any sauce created by utilizing the liquid left over from cooking meat, combining it with a thickener, like flour or cornstarch, and dissolving this mixture with a liquid, like broth or milk. The history of using a flavorful sauce with food may date back to the early Roman Empire, when sauces made with a dozen or more ingredients would get poured liberally over foods with dubious origins or freshness. As gravy made its way to America with the early colonists, it became a means of stretching out a meal, a solution to scarcity, enabling people to feed hungry mouths while providing adequate calories and flavor.

Modern-day gravy recipes are as diverse as the United States of America. There are dish, or natural, gravies, pan gravies, and kettle gravies. Each of these gravies requires finesse to achieve the perfect balance of fat to thickener to liquid to create a creamy delight. Let's look at some quintessentially American gravy recipes from across the U.S.

If you have ever eaten a plate of piping hot enchiladas in a Mexican restaurant in the U.S., you've likely had chili gravy. Chili gravy is a classic Tex-Mex invention, the perfect example of two cultures merging their culinary histories. The earliest mention of this type of sauce dates back to the 1890s, and canned versions could be found by the early 1900s. 

The sauce begins with lard or oil, which gets thickened with either flour or masa to create a roux. The key to chili gravy lies in the spices used, primarily chili powder, cumin, garlic, smoked paprika, and oregano. Once these spices have toasted, the sauce gets finished with chicken or beef broth. The result is something of a cross between a classic Mexican red enchilada sauce, which gets made with tomatoes, and a brown gravy. This sauce is also commonly used to garnish burritos, rice, and beans. It is also a good base for a classic chili con carne recipe.

Perhaps no gravy is as quintessentially Southern as red-eye gravy, also known as poor man's gravy, bird-eye gravy, bottom sop, muddy gravy, cedar gravy, and red ham gravy. It's a key component of what is known as a "meat 'n' three" dinner, which includes a choice of meat (often country-fried steak, ham, or pot roast) served with a choice of three side dishes, including potatoes, corn, lima beans, macaroni, cornbread, and biscuits. This feast gets topped off with this delectable gravy made simply from the drippings of a pan-seared, salt-cured, hardwood-smoked country ham and mixed with leftover black coffee. That's it. No flour, no other liquid.

It is exceedingly simplistic, yet its origins are steeped in legend. While some believe red-eye gravy gets its name from how the ham on a plate coated in this sauce looks like a red eye, others insist it is because after you eat this gravy, the caffeine will give you bloodshot eyes. The most popular theory, however, stems from a story about President Andrew Jackson, who purportedly asked the chef of his encampment to make him a gravy that was as red as his eyes were after a night of binge drinking. Whichever story is true, when in the South, do not skip the opportunity to experience this distinctive gravy.

While several sources attribute hamburger gravy to the Midwest, research shows that this simple dinner has its origins in a dish called SOS that was a staple for the Armed Services. "SOS" is short for "S*** On A Shingle," referring to a gravy made of chipped beef served over toast. The earliest reference to this dish is in the 1910 Manual for Army Cooks, although it became popularized during World War II as a quick, easy, shelf-stable meal for a large group of starving soldiers.

In its earliest iterations, salt-cured chipped beef would soak in water overnight to remove some of its excess salinity. This beef would then get added to a simple gravy. The gravy used equal parts butter and flour for a roux, beef stock, and canned evaporated milk. By 1942, a variation of this dish called creamed beef had become common. This recipe involved cooking ground beef in onions and creating a gravy made with flour, evaporated milk, and beef stock that would be combined with the beef and served over toast points.

This recipe made its way out of Army mess halls and into the homes of Americans looking to feed their families simple, hearty dishes. Indeed, for a time, variations of SOS even became common on IHOP and Cracker Barrel menus across the country, showing just how ubiquitous this humble meal became to the fabric of our daily lives.

Another quintessentially Southern gravy is a basic tomato gravy. Tomato gravy is the ultimate "desperation gravy" — a dish made when resources are thin, but creativity abounds. Tomato gravy generally gets served for breakfast atop biscuits, cornbread, rice, grits, and scrambled eggs. It is a comfort food born out of necessity; the adage "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" applies here. Toward the end of summer, unpicked, overripe tomatoes are practically falling off their vines. These tomatoes are often quite large and watery, making them challenging to use for anything other than a sauce of some ilk. Enter gravy.

This gravy has a myriad of permutations, beginning with the fat used. Pan drippings from bacon or sausage are preferred, but butter will do. Next comes the thickener, which may be flour, cornmeal, or no thickener. This roux should get cooked to a dark amber color to give it the proper nutty richness that makes this dish distinct. The tomatoes should get peeled, seeded, and chopped or grated, although canned tomatoes will do just fine in a pinch. And finally, the liquid gets added. This liquid can be stock, cream, water, or none, depending on the juiciness of the tomato. Then come the add-ons, which are infinite but often include sautéed onions, celery, green onions, and even okra.

It would be impossible to pinpoint mushroom gravy to a single location in the U.S. — it was likely brought to America by early colonists who were already making a similar type of mushroom sauce to garnish various cuts of meat. Indeed, one can look at the legacy of recipes for mushroom gravies like a French chasseur, German jägerschnitzel, and Italian Marsala for evidence that versions of mushroom gravy evolved in many regions. Because mushrooms are so ubiquitous, it makes sense that each culture would adapt a gravy recipe to accommodate locally sourced mushrooms.

That said, the techniques for all variations of mushroom gravy are essentially the same. Mushrooms are added to pan drippings or butter and sautéed until they cook down, yielding all their natural moisture. Then the flour is added as a thickener and liquid as a finish to the gravy. While stock can get used, some recipes call for milk or cream for an added luxurious texture. Additional flavorings may include wine, vinegar, and herbs to round out the earthy, umami-rich mushroom flavor.

Shrimp gravy, the base of the quintessential breakfast food shrimp and grits, is most often attributed to Charleston, South Carolina. The first "Breakfast Shrimp" recipe appeared in a cookbook published in 1950 entitled "Charleston Receipts." However, its earliest origins go back even farther to the enslaved populations brought from Africa to the plantation kitchens of the Lowcountry. Food historians like Mike Twitty, author of the James Beard award-winning "The Cooking Gene," note that similar shellfish-based dishes were well-known in Africa before the beginning of slavery in the U.S.

What makes shrimp gravy so distinct is its preparation and ingredients. This dish begins with a base of bacon drippings and flour to create a dark roux. Chopped onions, bell peppers, and celery get incorporated before beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, and herbs join the mix. The final step is to add the small shrimp harvested off the coast of South Carolina. Once this dark brown gravy gets cooked, it gets scooped over creamy grits for the ultimate stick-to-your-ribs breakfast comfort food.

Since none of the gravies heretofore mentioned included eggs, at least not in their raw form, this particular recipe intrigued us. It makes us think of a classic French Hollandaise sauce that has been poorly executed. The exact origins of this sauce evade us — while it was reportedly also known as rich man's gravy, YouTuber Courtney Morris describes it as a "vile act of desperation."

The recipe seems simple enough. Start with either bacon grease or butter, then stir in whisked eggs and milk. Some recipes indicate using flour as a thickener, while others suggest simply letting the heat to do its magic on the eggs, allowing them to thicken on their own. Regardless of the recipe, the result is a clumpy egg sauce to serve over mashed potatoes, biscuits, cornbread, ham, and fried eggs for a country-style breakfast. The only thing that could make this particular recipe palatable is to save the bacon bits from the rendered bacon and return them to the sauce for some added texture and flavor. Otherwise, we recommend sticking with a Hollandaise sauce, even if it is a more complex recipe to recreate.