Biscuits and Gravy, Y'all!

Wow, what a week. Full of ups and downs and unfortunately it ended at a low point. I would love to dish the juicy details, but it's for my book. Luckily my lovely husband just got home from a week-long TDY Friday night when everything went down. He provided much needed advice, love, silence, hugs, and bought me my favorite comfort sweet- Ferrero Rocher chocolates! So yesterday I asked him, "what do you want me to cook you? An elaborate dinner or breakfast?" He quickly said breakfast. He then looked at me with bright-eyes and a hungry smile, then said, "Biscuits and Gravy." 

Twins?

I'm going to be honest. I've only seen Biscuits and Gravy at chain restaurants and buffets. They never ever looked so appealing. The smell, the gravy skin, the appearance was just a huge turn-off for me. But how could I say no to him? So I promptly looked up some Biscuits and Gravy recipes, but the best one looks-wise came from my favorite southern chef, Tyler Florence. I used my favorite biscuit recipe and adapted his gravy recipe. And lemme tell y'all something, it's gooooooooooood!! And super simple!

Biscuits and Gravy!

For Biscuits:

Adapted from Ina Garten's Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuits

2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour

1 T Baking Powder

1 1/2 t kosher salt

3/4 cup of cold butter

1/2 to 3/4 cup buttermilk, well shaken

1 large egg

Sausage Gravy

Adapted from Tyler Florence

1lb of sausage. Any suace can be used. I used mild Italian sausage links and took them out of their casings

2 T Bacon grease or butter (optional if there isn't enough fat from sausages in the pan)

1/4 cup flour

4 cups of warmed milk

Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 425F.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add cold butter and combine with a pastry cutter, your finger or stand mixer/food processor, cut in butter until butter is the size of peas.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix about 1/2 cup of buttermilk and egg. Make a well in the butter-flour mixture and add milk and egg. Stir until mixture is wet. if it's too dry, add more buttermilk. If it's too wet add more flour.

Now dump contents on a lightly floured counter/board. Gently knead about six times to combine the biscuit dough. 

Pre-kneading

Now, either using a flour-dusted rolling pin or the palms of your hand roll/pat out do into a 10 by 5 rectangle. OR roll or pat dough until it's 1 inch high. Either cut rectangle or use a biscuit cutter (or if your ghetto fab like me use a standard floured drinking glass). cut out about 8 rectangles or as many rounds you can.

Line a baking sheet with parchment and place biscuits on. At this point you can refrigerate the dough until needed. 

Bake in the over for 20 minutes or until golden. 

This is great made ahead! I put mine in the fridge, then started the gravy.

Gravy

Brown Sausages in a skillet

Remove sausages from skillet. Some straggler sausage bits will be left behind which is fine, but leave as much fat as possible.

Melt 2T of fat over medium heat. In this case, I used some bacon grease I saved from cooking bacon. Waste not! Momma would be proud.

Add flour and cook flour until it's a nice caramel color. This is to ensure the floury taste is eliminated. This take about 4 minutes to do.

Add warmed milk by the ladle-fulls. Whisk like crazy initially add ladle-fulls of milk for a smooth gravy.

You may or may not use all the milk. Add enough to the consistency you prefer. Stir in the sausage. And season with course salt and freshly ground pepper

Serve over biscuits and you're done!

Hope you try and enjoy this!!!