I've finally given biscuits and sausage gravy a shot. It's one of my favorite breakfasts and one I don't have a whole lot of experience with given my Yankee upbringing. My sausage recipe came from a Google search and my biscuits came from this forum post.
There were actually two attempts at biscuits and gravy. I skimped on sausage the first time and got some really cheap stuff which cooked down to leave me with no grease. No grease = no gravy. The biscuits came out really well though with a noticeable buttermilk taste throughout. I even got a little bit of a crispy crust! This recipe makes perfect biscuits - if you can deal with all the butter.
One of the first batch of biscuits. Battery for reference. These biscuits were made in my biscuit pan giving the nice shape. It's also a frankenstein biscuit made of two biscuits sitting on top of each other.
For round two I went to the store and got the name brand Jimmy Dean sausage. It didn't quite give me the two tablespoons+ of grease I wanted (around 1-1.5) but I worked with what I had. The gravy was a technical success: patience gave me a gravy without lumps. The finished product was a bit flavorless though - I probably worked in too much flour for my smaller portion of grease. It's supposed to be a 1:1 ratio for the roux. I also went out and got a cookie cutter to help with cutting the biscuits - the glass I picked last time turned into a mess. Unfortunately when cutting the biscuits I accidentally used the smaller cutter resulting in many thin biscuits with no fluffy insides. I also didn't stack them the second time around. Stacking them would give even my smaller cut biscuits more fluffy matter inside so I think I'll always go with stacking in the future.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: sausage gravy
The failed second attempt at biscuits. The mutant in the top right was made from leftover scraps.
Here's the order for making them come out at the same time. I cooked the sausage the night before. The sausage took half an hour and the rest took an hour.
- Mix dry biscuit ingredients.
- Fry up sausage the night before, drain and save both grease and meat.
- Melt grease and mix in flour for the roux. After you're happy with the roux I turned the heat down to low and returned to it every few minutes while making the biscuits.
- Start preheating the oven.
- Prepare the biscuits and put them in the oven.
- Start mixing in the milk to the roux. The article recommends medium heat. Go with whatever gets things boiling as that is the goal.
- The gravy should thicken to look like sausage gravy as the biscuits are getting done.