Definitely break up and brown the sausage good. I actually prefer to make a piece of bacon crispy first and chop it up and add it to the cooking sausage. I don’t drain the grease unless it’s really excessive, in fact I might add a butter for a little more liquid and deliciousness. Once the sausage starts to brown pretty good, I’ll start adding flour and stirring it in to start soaking up all those juices and turning it into a little thicker mix. Once that happens for a while and the flour is getting browned with the sausage then you start adding milk/ heavy cream of your choosing. Continue to let simmer and slowly add milk product until you get the consistency you want.