Killer Hearty Country Biscuit and Sausage Gravy

One of the dishes you would think only a country person would understand. Ha, I perfected this one as well! If I ever owns a restaurant, this will be on the menu.

So, for the baking part, I did a quick basic biscuit recipe search. I followed the recipe, except for I added about a cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese into the dough, and of course, typical me, substitute. I never really had any shortening on hand, so I did butter. Instead of kneading the dough, I left my blender do the work. The new blender I got had a dough blade, so naturally I HAD to test it out. Conclusion? I’d rather do it by hand next time than washing 1000 parts. But hey, if you never try it, you will never find out, right?

Instead of rolling out the dough and cut out perfect circle biscuits, I just used 2 large spoons, scooped out the sticky dough from the blender and use the second spoon to push the dough off the first spoon and dropped about 3/4 cup to 1 cup size dough directly onto a heavy cast iron skillet, leaving as much space in between as I thought it would allow. In the end, I had to move a couple of biscuit dough drops around a bit to even them out, but no big deal.

425F, about 13 minutes. I turned the pan around once at about 11 minutes, so the other side could get some color as well. This is how it came out, not bad huh? There was a biscuit in the center. That tester was gobbled down in no time, before I realized I needed a picture!

The sausage gravy part is the money maker.

Ingredients:

A case of pork sausage, I used regular Jimmy Dean. Any flavor would work, depends on your taste.

1/2 stick of butter

1/2 cup of all purpose flour

4 cups of milk, 0%, 1%, 2%, 1/2%, whole… I don’t really care, depends on your preference

2 cups of water with a chicken bouillon cube, or 2 cups of chicken stock, or vegetable stock

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tsp sea salt – please adjust this amount to your liking

Optional – a splash of heavy cream, of course I didn’t have it on hand at this time, pretty much never have it on hand. So I ignored this part.

Method:

Heat up a stainless steel pan on medium high heat. I chose stainless steel pan, because there are a lot of whisking involved. As you see butter and flour, you probably guessed, we are going to make roux. I have a stainless steel whisk on hand, so I didn’t really want to use that whisk on non-stick pans. Maybe I am weird, but I chose my pan carefully.

First thing first, cook the sausage. I heated up my pan, took my time to open the sausage casing, and I did take my time to tear pieces of sausages and drop it into the pan. Or, you can dump the whole thing into the pan and use a spatula or potato masher to separate the meat. I prefer the first option if I have time. Nothing fancy, just cook the meat until it’s fully cooked. Use a slotted spoon to take out cooked sausage and put into a large bowl, and set aside.

Drop half of a stick of butter into the same pan. Once butter is melted, I dumped in the flour. Whisk until flour is incorporated with butter and no dry flour is left. I continued to whisk flour and butter mixture on medium heat for a minute or so, so the flour can be properly cooked and there will not be any raw flour taste to the gravy in the end.

I don’t want to achieve a dark brown color for this roux, just a cooked flour status. So, a nice pale golden color is what I am looking for. Once flour is cooked through, I dumped all the liquid in. Whisk constantly, don’t worry about the lumps at this point, everything will disappear, I promise. You can raise the heat a bit to medium high. Keep whisking, switch hands if needed. Definitely arm workout, especially as the gravy thickens. You will notice all the lumps disappearing and the mixture slightly bubbles a bit. Add all the seasoning in, and taste for adjustment. Kill the heat, dump all the cooked sausage back into the pot. Mix up and serve over biscuit.

You will never guess this wasn’t made by a country grandma.