My Family Puts Hard Boiled Eggs In Our Gravy—Just Us?
Egg gravy made me a breakfast person. With roots in the Deep South, the dish is humble comfort food made to pair with sweet hot coffee and the sun's first rays of light.
Butter, flour, and milk are whipped into a white gravy that’s seasoned with salt and pepper, garlic powder, and Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning if you share my tastes. The eggs are hard-boiled, sliced, and dropped in the gravy. The challenge lies in reaching an ideal consistency of not too thin or thick, but just smooth enough to pour over biscuits or toast, roughly torn into bite-sized pieces. Top with hot sauce: Tabasco is my first choice, New Orleans' Crystal as a back-up.
A silly question to ask is, what are the precise measurements? Recipes passed down in the bayous of Louisiana and sticks of Mississippi leave that up to intuition, so you can only hope your ancestors are guiding your hands.
Thing is, tourists won't find egg gravy on restaurant menus. Even most New Orleans locals would be quick to furrow their brows and rack their brains and make a mental correction: "Do you mean sausage gravy?"
Not in my family. Egg gravy was a mainstay in our house. Once made out of necessity for a generation in poverty, it's now a dish we eat just because we like it.
I associate breakfast with rituals—a meal forever linked to family and that finite window of time we spent under the same roof. My sister and her sweet tooth remind me of chocolate chip pancakes and mini blueberry muffins. On the rare occasions that my dad took the helm in the kitchen, he'd churn out potato latkes or cinnamon toast. My mom's preferred mimosa ratio is locked in my mind from playing the role of household bartender: a 50/50 split of no-pulp orange juice and prosecco.
Our three-bedroom house was tucked in a suburban cul-de-sac where neighbors hosted block parties, kids set up lemonade stands, and the ice cream truck delivered sticky popsicles to eager hands every summer. Oak trees with Spanish moss cushioning their boughs lined the winding road to my neighborhood, a tight-knit community in a lakeside city across an estuary from our loud and proud New Orleans.
In the early mornings before heading to school, my sleepy sister and I slid into our seats at the kitchen counter while Mom puttered between the fridge and pantry. The usual spread: cereal or oatmeal, buttered toast, sugared strawberries, and a few vitamins. But weekends unlocked a world of possibilities, and nothing roused me out of bed faster than confirmation that egg gravy awaited on the table.
As years passed, egg gravy gradually transformed into an occasional treat. The Boyanton daughters grew up and moved away—one's now in the mountains of Colorado and the other on Florida’s beaches, with our parents in between in the Magnolia State. But every holiday season, we flock back to each other. And when I dig into my plate of egg gravy, that first bite still tastes like reverence.
When Dad gets a forkful, it's a different sentiment: nostalgia. It was a low-cost breakfast that his father cooked on Sundays to feed nine or so mouths. My grandfather likely learned the recipe from his mother as a way to stretch a paycheck and survive economic hardships during the Depression.
Egg gravy is a recipe of reincarnations. It once filled a physical void, then remedied the emotional ache of separation. And it likely hasn’t served its last purpose. I once labored over bright orange pans on my gas stove in college, trying to assuage homesickness with amateur attempts at the dish. Today, I broke out the ingredients and lovingly made it for my family. Maybe, one day, I’ll pass it down to children of my own, and egg gravy will be whatever they need it to be, too.
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