How to Make Vegan Biscuits and Gravy at Home (And Why Ours Are Better)
We’re sharing our secrets. Most of them, anyway.
Okay, real talk: vegan biscuits and gravy is one of those dishes that separates the “this is pretty good for vegan food” crowd from the “wait, THIS IS VEGAN?!” crowd. And we firmly believe everyone deserves to be in the second group. We’ve been serving our version at Off The Griddle for years, and it’s consistently one of the dishes people come back for — and DM us about — and sometimes cry a little over (we’ve seen it, we respect it).
So we’re sharing our secrets. Not all of them — we still want you to visit us on SE Foster or NE Alberta — but enough that you can make something genuinely excellent at home on a lazy Sunday morning. Get your sweats on. Let’s do this.
Why Does Vegan Gravy Usually Kinda Suck?
No shade to anyone who’s tried. But you know what we’re talking about. The pale, gluey situation. The flavor that tastes like someone described sausage gravy to someone who’d never had it, who then described it to someone else, and eventually a recipe emerged. It’s technically gravy in the same way a participation ribbon is technically an award.
The problem is that most recipes try to replace the meat, dairy, and fat — when the real move is to stop caring what the original version was doing and just build something incredible from scratch. Same destination, completely different road.
“Stop trying to replace the pork. Start building flavor like you never needed it in the first place.”
Off The Griddle Kitchen
Here’s what you actually need: fat for that luxurious body, umami so it tastes deep and savory instead of like flour soup, and well-seasoned “sausage” that brings the whole thing home. Nail those three things and you’ve got gravy that makes people put their forks down and stare into the middle distance for a moment.
The Three Things That Actually Matter
1. The Fat (Don’t Skimp, Please)
This is not a low-calorie dish. It was never meant to be. Country gravy is rich and indulgent and that’s exactly why we love it. Use a good full-fat vegan butter — we’re fans of Earth Balance in our kitchen, and Miyoko’s is incredible if you can get it — and use the full amount. The fat is what makes the roux work, gives the gravy its silky texture, and makes every bite feel like a warm hug. You can have a salad later. Live your life.
2. The Umami (Your Secret Weapon)
This is the part most home recipes miss, and it’s why their gravy tastes flat no matter how much salt they add. You need depth — the kind of savory, lingering richness that makes food taste complex and satisfying. Our trick is layering a few umami boosters: a small splash of soy sauce or tamari (just a teaspoon, you won’t taste “soy” — you’ll just taste more), nutritional yeast for a subtle savory note, and mushroom powder if you have it kicking around. None of these announce themselves. They just make everything taste better. It’s like the bass line in a great song — you might not notice it, but you’d definitely notice if it was gone.
3. The Sausage (Brown It Like You Mean It)
At Off The Griddle we make our own walnut sausage from scratch, loaded with sage, fennel, black pepper, and smoked paprika. At home, crumbled tempeh or a good plant-based sausage gets you most of the way there — as long as you actually brown it. We’re talking real color, not just warmed-through. Get your pan hot, let it sit, resist the urge to stir constantly. Those brown bits on the bottom of the pan? That’s your flavor right there. Deglaze it, don’t lose it.
Alright, Here’s the Recipe
Makes 4 generous servings (or 2 servings if you’re having one of those mornings). Leftover gravy reheats like a dream — just add a splash of oat milk and stir over low heat.
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (or GF 1:1 blend)
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 6 tbsp cold vegan butter, cubed
- ¾ cup cold oat milk or soy milk
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 8 oz tempeh or plant-based sausage, crumbled
- 3 tbsp vegan butter
- 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 2 cups unsweetened oat milk
- ¼ cup vegetable broth
- 1 tsp soy sauce or tamari
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp dried sage
- 1 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- Black pepper, generously
- Salt to taste
- Preheat oven to 425°F. Mix the apple cider vinegar into your cold plant milk and let it sit for a minute — you just made vegan buttermilk! It curdles slightly, which is exactly what you want. Gives the biscuits that subtle tang and helps them puff up beautifully.
- Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Drop in your cold cubed butter and work it in with your fingertips until it looks like rough, pea-sized crumbles. Key word: COLD. If the butter warms up, the biscuits won’t be flaky. Work fast, or pop the bowl in the fridge for 5 minutes if needed.
- Pour in the buttermilk and stir with a fork until a shaggy dough just comes together. Some dry streaks? Totally fine. Overworking the dough is how you get biscuits that taste like hockey pucks, so stop while it still looks a little rough.
- Dump onto a lightly floured surface, pat into a 1-inch-thick round, and cut straight down with a cutter or a glass (don’t twist — twisting seals the edges and your biscuits won’t rise as well). Re-pat the scraps and cut again.
- Bake 12–14 minutes until the tops are golden and the kitchen smells incredible. While they’re in the oven, make the gravy — timing is everything here.
- Get your skillet hot over medium-high heat. Add the crumbled tempeh or sausage — no oil needed yet — and let it sit without stirring for 2 minutes to get some real brown color going. Stir, let it sit again. You want golden-brown crumbles, not steamed beige ones. Season with sage, fennel, smoked paprika, and a very generous amount of black pepper. Set aside.
- In the same pan (don’t wash it — those browned bits are gold), melt the vegan butter over medium heat. Add the flour all at once and stir constantly for a full 90 seconds. It’ll look like a paste. That’s your roux, and the 90 seconds isn’t optional — raw flour tastes chalky and weird. Just commit.
- Start adding the oat milk slowly, about ½ cup at a time, whisking as you go to keep lumps from forming. Pour in the veggie broth too. Keep whisking over medium heat — the gravy will thicken up over about 5 minutes. You’re looking for a consistency that coats the back of a spoon without running off immediately.
- Stir in the soy sauce and nutritional yeast, then fold in your sausage crumbles. Taste it. Add salt. Add more black pepper (seriously, keep going). The gravy should taste deeply savory and a little bold — it’s going over a biscuit, it can handle it.
- Split those hot biscuits, ladle the gravy over shamelessly, and eat immediately. This is not a dish for waiting.
Too thick? Splash of oat milk, stir over low heat, done. Too thin? Mix 1 tsp flour with 2 tbsp cold water, whisk it in, cook 2 more minutes. And heads up — gravy thickens as it cools, so pull it off the heat when it’s just barely thicker than you want.
Okay But Why Is Ours Better Though
We’re not going to be weird about it — this home recipe is legitimately delicious. Make it. Be proud of it. Force it on your friends and family and accept their compliments graciously.
But here’s the thing: our walnut sausage is made from scratch every day with a blend of walnuts, lentils, and a spice mix we’ve been tweaking for years. The biscuits are baked fresh every morning. And there’s a certain magic that happens when a kitchen full of people who genuinely love this food make it for hundreds of people a week — something that’s just hard to manufacture at home, no matter how good your roux game is.
So: make this recipe. Love it. And then come see us and do a little comparison research. We support this.
5 Ways to Level Up Your Home Version
- Oat milk only, please. It has the body and neutral sweetness that gets closest to whole milk. Almond milk is too watery and has its own flavor agenda. Soy milk works in a pinch.
- Season your sausage before it goes in the gravy. If you season everything together at the end, it all blurs into one vaguely savory thing. Seasoning the sausage separately gives each component its own personality.
- The 90-second roux is real. You cannot rush it. Undercooked flour tastes like someone put wallpaper paste in your gravy. Set a timer if you have to. You’re building flavor, not just thickening liquid.
- More black pepper than you think. Then a little more after that. Classic country gravy is supposed to have a pepper bite. Embrace it. This is not the time for restraint.
- Freeze extra biscuits. Leftover gravy + a biscuit pulled straight from the freezer and toasted is one of the best weekday breakfasts in existence. Future you will be extremely grateful.
The Whole Point of All of This
We started Off The Griddle because we couldn’t stand the idea that going vegan meant saying goodbye to the food that felt like home. Biscuits and gravy is Sunday morning. It’s diner booths and bad weather outside and nowhere you need to be. That feeling doesn’t belong to any one ingredient — it belongs to the dish.
Our whole thing has always been proving that plant-based cooking doesn’t ask you to give anything up. It just asks you to be a little creative about how you get there. This recipe is a good example of that. We hope you love it.
And if you make it — seriously, please tag us. We live for that stuff. 🌱
Come Try the Real Thing
Our biscuits and gravy — made with scratch biscuits and house walnut sausage — is served every day at both Portland locations, 9am to 3pm.
SE Foster: 6526 SE Foster Rd · NE Alberta: 2215 NE Alberta St
Open 7 Days · 9am–3pm · 503-764-9160
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