Snowy weather in the forecast would always mean what my family called “French Toast” weather. This is because everyone would rush to the store to buy milk, eggs and bread, and what else can you make with milk, eggs and bread, but French toast? Well today was a “Sausage and Biscuits” kind of day. Now that Thanksgiving is over, I was taking stock of what was in my fridge besides leftovers and found half a package of sausage (the other half was used for stuffing), a half used gallon of milk (used for the turkey gravy and other assorted baked goods), and a carton of buttermilk (bought one too many cartons for brining the turkey). There’s only one thing I can think of to be made with sausage, milk, and buttermilk and, despite the last time I tried making them being a complete failure, I can finally call myself a proper Southern cook: after all these years, I have finally mastered biscuits and sausage gravy that taste just like home.
I’ve always been too impatient in the kitchen and would often end up with basically inedible lumpy gravy. Worse, instead of big lumps of flour, I would whisk so vigorously that my gravy would have millions of tiny lumps that were absolutely impossible to get rid of and extremely unpleasant to look at. Wondra Flour helped me avoid those lumps but then Wondra failed me (I think the canister was finally too old) and I realized I was going to have to learn without any cheats. The secret isn’t necessarily patience; it’s just all in the technique…
First, you should have some sort of liquefied fat in the pan, be it drippings from the meat or melted butter if your meat didn’t give off enough drippings. Second, add flour, a tablespoon at a time, until you have a paste (called a roux) in the pan. The paste will turn golden brown the longer you cook it (a dark roux is always the start to a good gumbo). Third, instead of just dumping milk in and hoping to stir it to smoothness, add the milk, a splash at a time, whisking until the paste fully absorbs the milk each time. As you continue to do this splash by splash, the paste will start to look more like a dough, and later still, more like a thick batter. Finally after all the milk is incorporated, you’ll end up with gravy that looks and tastes like perfection and without a gross clump of flour in sight. It’s a little confusing going from a liquid in the pan, to a paste, and slowly bringing it back to liquid again, but it’s exactly the trick to perfect gravy every time.
The biscuits are buttermilk biscuits from the author of my new favorite cookbook, Sarabeth’s Bakery by Sarabeth Levine. It had been on my wish list for ages and I found it at Borders during their closing sale (there may have been tears shed on my part) for 50% off. Borders’ untimely demise, while terribly sad, brought me what is likely going to be one of the most treasured cookbooks to ever grace my shelf.
Southern Sausage Gravy & Buttermilk Biscuits
Buttermilk Biscuits adapted from Sarabeth’s Bakery
Sausage Gravy is my own recipe
Yields 4 single servings or 2 servings for 2 hungry breakfasters, plus extra biscuits
Gravy
- ½ tube of country sausage (like Jimmy Dean)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1 ½ cups milk
- Up to ½ teaspoon salt
- Fresh ground pepper
Biscuits
- 1 5/8 cups flour (I measured out 1 ½ cups and then filled my ¼ cup measuring cup just about half way)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- ¾ cups buttermilk
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees and cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Set sausage cooking in a pan over low-medium heat. I like to keep it low so that by the time I get the biscuits in the oven, the sausage is almost ready and I didn’t have to worry about it burning. Also, one of those round mesh screens that you lay across your pan is very nice to have in this case, so you don’t have grease splattering all over your stove while your back is turned.
- Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Scatter the cubed butter around the bowl and pulse the processor until the mixture looks like coarse meal.
- Instead of pulsing, turn the processor on and drizzle the buttermilk through the open feed tube. Continue processing just until the dough forms into one or two large balls, which won’t take too long.
- Lightly flour a surface and turn the dough out onto it. Knead the dough just a few times to bring it together, sprinkle flour on top of the dough, and roll it with a rolling pin just until ¾” thick (this is SUPER thick—I admit I rolled mine just a little and measured it and realized it was already 1/2” thick so I had to fold it over and roll it out again, which breaks Sarabeth’s “handle this dough as little as possible” rule).
- Cut the biscuits with a round biscuit cutter, about 2” wide. Sara warns you can gather up the scraps and re-roll them out once, but not a second time or else you’ll be over-handling the dough which results in tough biscuits. Cutting the initial batch and then re-rolling the scraps just the one time gave me 7 biscuits.
- Bake the biscuits for 15-18 minutes, until golden brown on top. And while the biscuits are baking…
- Once the sausage is fully cooked, transfer the sausage to a separate bowl, leaving as much of the sausage grease behind in the pan as you can (gross sounding, but oh so delicious). My sausage didn’t leave behind much grease, so I added 2 tablespoons of butter to melt in the pan. If your sausage gave off a lot of grease, you can use less butter.
- Turn the heat to low and add the flour to the fat in the pan, one tablespoon at a time, whisking thoroughly after each tablespoon until a thick paste is formed. It will darken quickly if your heat is too high.
- Add the milk to the pan, one splash at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition until the paste has fully absorbed the liquid. After all the milk has been added, you may notice that your gravy is a little thin, but this is fine since the gravy will thicken up as it simmers.
- Add the sausage back to the gravy and add the salt (to taste) and plenty of fresh ground pepper. Let the gravy simmer on the stove for at least 5 minutes until it thickens up a bit and reaches a consistency to your liking. (The biscuits are probably out of the oven by now)
- Split a hot biscuit in half and place the top and bottom halves on a plate with the insides facing up. Top with hot sausage gravy and serve immediately to your hungry Southern breakfasters!
