Biscuits and Gravy

 

There is some serious snow out there! I haven't gone outside yet and frankly might not even do so today. Whenever I do I'll be taking pictures! I do have to say that we are so blessed to not be dealing with the level of storm that our neighbors to the south and east are - watching the news and hearing that so many thousands of people are without power and may be for a up to a week, while I'm snug and cozy in my apartment, reminds me of the blessings in my life.

Knowing that we were getting a ton of snow this weekend, I figured it would be a good time to make some soul-warming comfort foods to enjoy while the white stuff fell. Right now I have some beef bourguignon (otherwise known in my house as 'beef yum yum') on the stove. This morning's breakfast consisted of...homemade biscuits and sausage gravy.

I love biscuits and gravy. There's not many things in life I don't love, of course. But biscuits and gravy? What a fabulous treat.

I hadn't attempted biscuits from scratch prior to this morning (I usually use Bisquick). And in retrospect I don't know why I never went all the way and made the effort - they're super easy!

Start with two cups of flour, a tablespoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar. Mix it together in a bowl.

Add 1/3 cup of shortening. In my case I used softened butter because I figured it would give the biscuits a better taste. In hindsight, it was a good choice.

Use a pastry cutter or two forks to cut the shortening or butter into the dry mixture. Or if you have a food processor it would make the job a lot easier. As we know from a previous post, I don't have one. I need one. If you want to donate one I'd be more than happy to accept it.

Sidenote: I got to use my pastry cutter for the first time today! It was super fun!

Once you have a texture approaching coarse meal, add a cup of milk and stir until everything's mixed together.

Don't overstir, just until everything's incorporated. At this point I let the dough sit in the fridge for a while and I worked on my gravy.

 

 

Once the sausage was cooked, and I'll be covering that in a bit, I floured my marble cutting board and turned the dough out onto it. I only kneaded a few times - again, being careful to not overwork the dough.

Then I patted the dough out and used my trusty tumbler to cut out biscuits. I've found that I like patting the dough rather than rolling in the case of biscuits I've made in the past. I placed the biscuits in a greased 8x8 pan (I could have used a bigger pan and will in the future!) and baked them in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Voila! Beautiful, buttery and golden.

Now on to the gravy.

I should have used less sausage, let me put it out there right now. Normally I use half a pound if I'm cooking for the two of us and the biscuits and gravy are the main dish. Today I used a bit more, and I have no idea what possessed me.

Brown the sausage, breaking it up as you go along.

Once the sausage is nice and brown and crumbled up, sprinkle (or, if you're me just dump in unceremoniously) 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour.

Stir everything together and cook for a few minutes until you reach a nice tan color.

Add two cups of milk. I heated it in the microwave for about a minute prior to adding it so it wouldn't be going in cold and therefore take that much more time to heat through and begin to thicken.

Then just stir it all up and let it simmer and thicken. Add plenty of black pepper too! I find that it doesn't need salt (and that's saying something because I love the salt shaker a little too much) because the sausage is usually salty enough.  Still, to each their own.  Season to taste, I guess I should say!

Pretty soon, the gravy was gravy and the biscuits were baked. And here's how it all looked when chow time came...

Mmmmmm! Talk about scrumptious! As I said, I should have used less sausage because I like more gravy and less meat. But it's all a matter of personal preference of course.  Either way it's yummy and downright sinful.

So sit down, pull up your chair and tuck into a big ol' plate of this deliciousness.  Then allow the food coma to take over and just drift off into naptime.

You're gonna need to be rested once it comes time to shovel all that snow.