I’ve divulged my incredibly poor college days, and my kitchen mishaps that resulted because of them. With that in mind, think how much you’d appreciate it if some family friends from the country brought you Mason jars of tomatoes with onion—fresh from their garden. I was born and raised in Alabama, and yes, tomato gravy over biscuits is breakfast fit for a king in my book.

One morning, the thought of cracking open a book before breakfast just absolutely turned my stomach, so I wandered into the kitchen to scan the nearly bare pantry. (This tended to happen between my Dad’s grocery drop-off visits.) As my eyes landed upon the jar of chunky, red goodness, I smiled and headed to the fridge. Yes!!! I had canned biscuits! I put the biscuits in the oven, twisted the lid of the jar until the seal popped, and reached for a pot to put on the stove.

At that moment, I realized, I didn’t know how to make tomato gravy. Out of all the times I’d enjoyed it, I’d never once made it myself. I stood there a few moments with a puzzled look on my face, then opted to call my older sister. She always had a way of simplifying complex, Southern dishes in a way I could understand. …And with a past knowledge that extended to gravy packets, water and whisk, I’d need all the help I could get.

I called her and explained my situation. I could tell she wanted to laugh, but she always responded with a serious, “I can help” tone, as if she remembered how short a time it’d been since she was too, clueless.

“You melt butter in your skillet, and you sprinkle flour to absorb the butter. Use a spatula to scrape the flour as you brown it. You want it dark brown. DARK brown. That’s where all the flavor comes from.”

She explained that after this delicate flour browning process, you stir in the tomato and onion mixture, and you have tomato gravy.

Ah! That didn’t sound too bad.

So I heated my skillet, melted the butter and sprinkled about ¼ cup of flour. I grabbed my plastic, Wal-Mart spatula, and started spreading the flour around. It changed from white to light beige in no time. I kept spreading. Though I never took my eyes off it, and I stood and spread continually, the next thing I knew, the flour had turned black as black and reached a flaky, burnt ash consistency. If that wasn’t enough, a small stream of smoke was rising from the skillet as I began to take notice of the events unfolding before me.

Agh! It’s burnt. I can’t add my tomatoes to this. It’ll taste like ashes. The burnt flour went into the garbage and I decided to try again.

I studied the mixture quite intently, and to my surprise, it happened again! From tan to black—completely skipped dark brown.

By this time, I was hungry and running out of study time. Not to mention, I was tired of ingesting smoke. At this point I decided I’d make it my way. I took ¼ cup of flour, added about ¾ cup of water and began stirring with my whisk. This was much more like my packaged gravy experiences.

I stirred and stirred, but some of the flour had formed lumps instead of mixing into a smooth, creamy texture. Oh well, I added the tomatoes and onions, anyway. I stirred it all together and spooned it over my biscuits and enjoyed my lumpy gravy. Ya know, the lumps melded pretty well with the biscuits. It was like mini biscuit clumps on top of big, browned biscuits, mixed in with tomato gravy.

A few days later, I began to tell my mom of the strange, gravy adventure in the kitchen.

She laughed and said, “I’m going to have to tell you about cornstarch!”

Recipe:

Anyone can make tomato gravy-ish

¼ cup cornstarch

¾ cup water

Whisk cornstarch and water over high heat until it boils, then simmer until it reaches a slightly thick texture. Add home-made canned tomato and onion mixture (or a can of diced tomatoes with ¼ cup of chopped, yellow onion will do the trick). Simmer for 4-5 minutes, stirring constantly. Serve over biscuits or mashed potatoes.