Biscuits and Gravy Recipes?

[Ben]

I'm almost afraid to start this topic. 

I was eating a lot of biscuits and gravy on my road trip this week and kind of have a hankerin' to make some at home now. I have the biscuits down (Cowboy Ben's Cowboy Biscuits  "now with extra lard"<TM>) but am interested in good gravy recipes.

[Firethorn]

Hmm...  Not sure about your tastes, but mine(working from memory):

Break up & Brown a tube of hot sausage.  Drain fat into a bowl or something.

Gravy:  2 cups milk, 2 tbsp of corn starch (or 4 tbsp of flour), 2-4 tbsp drippings(or butter).

Mix the milk, drippings(or butter to make up if your sausage is lean), flour, and fresh ground pepper(about a tbsp, but to taste) in a pot of suitable size.  One of those springy whisks is good.  Mix it up good.

Turn up the heat to high, and you have about a minute before you need to be stirring constantly, and I mean constantly.   Once it's boiling 'rapidly' and shows some signs of thickening, turn the heat down/off, and add the sausage, switching to a big spoon for stirring.  Keep stirring until it stops boiling.  Serve with biscuits. 

[Brad Johnson]

BISQUITS AND GRAVY

Ingredients
Bisquits
Gravy

Instructions
Place bisquits on plate. Pour on gravy. Consume. Repeat

Brad

[cambeul41]

I concur with Firethorn, except that my favored sausage is lean enough not to need draining.

I do like biscuits, but I am also quite happy with crushed potatoes or rice.

[lupinus]

Basic cream gravy is one to two tablespoons of fat and flour per cup of milk. Exact ratio depending on your preference on thickness.

Make a basic roux with the fat(or drippings) and flue, not to much color, and whisk in the milk. Cook till it simmers and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Bacon or sausage drippings are best, I'll remove the meat from the pan and then add it back near the end.

On thing I like to do is add a little splash of buttermilk right at the end. Careful not to add to much but a little adds a nice flavor.


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[MillCreek]

I take a one pound tube of Safeway Country Style Sausage and brown it well along with some diced onion.  I use a potato masher on the sausage as it browns to break up the big chunks.  I then add probably about a quarter cup of flour to the undrained browned sausage/onions and saute this until the flour-coated sausage is brown and I have a sausage roux.  I then add milk gradually, stirring all the while, until the gravy is the desired consistency.  I add several shakes of Johnny's Seasoning Salt and four dashes of Worcestershire sauce to adjust seasoning to taste.  Serve over hot biscuits.  We make this probably twice a month, and after experimenting with various bulk sausage over the years, the Safeway brand is our current favorite.

[Brad Johnson]

Hmm...  Not sure about your tastes, but mine(working from memory):

Break up & Brown a tube of hot sausage.  Drain fat into a bowl or something.

Gravy:  2 cups milk, 2 tbsp of corn starch (or 4 tbsp of flour), 2-4 tbsp drippings(or butter).

No! No! No! Cornstarch gravy? Bleccch!!

After browning the sausage turn heat off, remove meat, and let drippings cool slightly. Sprinkle on flour equal in quantity to the drippings. Turn heat to medium and stir until it begins to take on a golden color (about five minutes). Pour in milk and bring slowly to a low boil. Ahould he about the consistency of heavy cream. Turn off heat and let stand to thicken. Serve. Place leftover gravy in fridge for soppin' with leftover bisquits.

Or forget spooning out the meat. Crumble rather than slice for cooking, then follow the remaining directions for meaty gravy.

Brad

[Firethorn]

I concur with Firethorn, except that my favored sausage is lean enough not to need draining.

I've used a variety of sausages, some I have to drain, most I use I'm draining and pressing it a bit to get enough drippings to put into the gravy!

Note how I specified using butter if you couldn't get enough drippings...

No! No! No! Cornstarch gravy? Bleccch!!

You've never tried it, have you?  Or maybe you did and whoever made it didn't use half the quantity as you should.  Note my instructions:  4tbsp of flour OR 2 tbsp of cornstarch.

I can taste the flour when I use that.  I can't taste the cornstarch.

It's also faster than your method because it eliminates the 5 minute browning period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux#Alternatives

[lupinus]

Interesting. I've only ever tasted flour when the roux wasn't cooked enough, or the gravy wasn't allowed to come up to the boil and then simmer for a few minutes. IOW the flour was undercooked.

Even when being lazy and using a beurre manie instead of a roux, I've never picked up on the flour when simmered sufficiently.


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[K Frame]

Mtnbkr brings back Carolina dry sausage every once in awhile from his trips down south.

Has a very different texture because it's been partially dried. Quite chewy, but holy crap does it make fantastic biscuits and gravy.

[Jocassee]

the best Sawmill Gravy is made with cream cheese. You read that correctly. I'll get you the wife's recipe if you send me your email address.

[lupinus]

the best Sawmill Gravy is made with cream cheese. You read that correctly. I'll get you the wife's recipe if you send me your email address.

Interesting.

Probably works similar as the splash of buttermilk I mentioned. Might have to try for comparison.

[lupinus]

And while we're on the subject my favorite biscuit recipe


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[TechMan]

SWMBO makes a killer gravy, but has no real recipe for it.  Though she does use sage sasusage, flour, butter and whole milk.

[French G.]

I make a proper roux with cast iron pan parched flour, butter, milk and cream, then I add crumbled sausage and lotsa pepper. I gotta dial it back, I added all the sausage grease last time, kid loved it, I have irritable bowel and can't do stupid stuff like that for long. But damn it was good. Need to get my dad's country ham gravy recipe though, we used to do 5 gallons of it at a time to feed an army. Never any leftovers.

[Firethorn]

I think that might be the problem - I was trained with starch, so was never taught to make a proper roux.  The wiki says that you have to cook it enough to kill the flour taste.

[K Frame]

I'm a northern boy. We always used the cornstarch or flour slurry to thicken things. Took a LONG time to cook the raw starch taste out of food.

I first heard of roux when watching Alton Brown some years back, and thought it made a lot of sense, so I tried it one holiday, and I've been using roux ever since. Make a day or so ahead, and that's one less thing you have to worry about. Just add to the gravy liquid until you get the thickness you need.

One thing to remember about roux, though. The darker you cook it, the less thickening power it has, so the more you'll need.

I always shoot for something around a peanut butter color when I'm cooking roux for a holiday dinner with turkey gravy, and darker when I'm thickening beef gravy.

[lupinus]

Good point to mention on the roux and the thickening going down as it cooks longer

Different levels of cooking for different styles of cooking and applications also. From just a few minutes for a light blond color(like here), all the way to a long time for a really deep chocolate color for Cajun cooking. Taking on a different flavor the darker it gets of course.

Then there's rouxs lazy cousin I mentioned above, beurre manie, which is equal parts softened butter and flour kneaded together. Good for when you are in a pinch or to lazy to make a roux in the pan. And less chance of lumps, unlike just adding flour by itself.


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[French G.]

No lumps ever, parch the flour, then add the flour to already melted butter in another pan, whisking it. Once that is consistent then start adding milk/cream.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

No lumps ever, parch the flour, then add the flour to already melted butter in another pan, whisking it. Once that is consistent then start adding milk/cream.

That's how I learned. We would get the flour pretty brown in oven then mix with butter

[Ben]

Great tips so far! I'm almost sorry I asked, because if I try all the recipes, I'm gonna gain 20lbs this month. 

[French G.]

I used to toss chunks of butter at the flour in the pan, I was wrong, introducing the cold to the flour makes clumps that never leave.

[K Frame]

I used to toss chunks of butter at the flour in the pan, I was wrong, introducing the cold to the flour makes clumps that never leave.

Actually, the clumps are being caused by the up to 20% water content in butter. That's why you should always foam your butter before adding flour. Once the butter stops foaming, the water is gone.

If you don't foam the butter, the water will cause the starch in the flour to gelatinize. Once that happens, it's impervious to water infiltration, and any flour in the gelatin ball stays as lump.

Traditional English puddings were made in a cloth that was boiled and, while hot, liberally coated with flour on both sides. The water and heat would cause the flour to gelatinize and make the cloth waterproof, meaning that the pudding batter that was then tied in the cloth would cook and not water log.

[Brad Johnson]

I think that might be the problem - I was trained with starch, so was never taught to make a proper roux.  The wiki says that you have to cook it enough to kill the flour taste.

This. Cooking until it begins to take on a golden tint eliminates the raw cereal taste.

Brad

[zxcvbob]

You can also simmer the gravy for about 10 minutes to fully-cook the flour.
I like flour gravy a lot better than cornstarch, although it's a little more work.

When I make gumbo instead of making a roux, I thicken it with flour that I browned in the oven ahead of time until it looks like cocoa.  I roast a pound or so of flour, and it keeps forever like that in a jar in the pantry.