Comfort Food Sausage Gravy and Biscuits!

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

My husband LOVES breakfast foods. I think he would eat breakfast for every meal if that was an option. One night last week, I asked him what he wanted for dinner, and he wanted to go to the restaurant downtown to get breakfast for dinner, but I knew we didn't have it in the budget to eat out anywhere other than fast food, so we ended up getting burgers instead. To make it up to him, I decided that we would have his favorite breakfast over the weekend: biscuits and gravy with an egg on top. My gravy skills have evolved over the course of the last decade since my husband and I started our marriage. Back when we got married, I couldn't make any kind of gravy that anyone would want to eat. There were several occasions in my self-taught gravy course when the concoction in the skillet got scraped out because it was not fit for human consumption. Our dog wouldn't even eat it! Over the years though, I have figured out some tricks from watching seasoned gravy makers (did you see what I did there? seasoned? Ha!) and have put some ideas into practice to get good gravy every time!

First things first. Biscuits. For this application, I just made biscuits according to the instructions on my mega size Bisquick box. I encourage you to use your favorite biscuit for this application. I really like this recipe for 7-Up Biscuits too.

Drop the dough on the baking sheet in spoonfuls. You could roll all of this out with your rolling pin and cut it into pretty round biscuits if you want, but I had places to go and people to see, so I did drop biscuits on this occasion. It only changes the texture of the finished product; the taste remains the same.

 Bake until golden and set aside until the gravy is ready to slather across the top of these pillow-y delights.

Now, gather up your ingredients for gravy.

I am very picky about sausage for sausage gravy. I have tried many different varieties of sausage, and the flavors of Bob Evans sausage or Jimmy Dean are the only ones that I like for this application. When I make this for our family of five, I try to use only half of the sausage in the package so I can make this recipe twice in the course of one trip to the store.

Ingredients: 1/2 lb Bob Evans or Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage

3 T of all purpose flour

12 oz can of evaporated milk

1 cup whole milk

salt and pepper to taste

Brown the sausage in a large skillet over medium heat. If you start getting too much color, turn your heat down. All of those bits of yummy goodness in the skillet become part of your gravy and can change the color of the gravy. The gravy should be a white color when you're finished.

Once the meat is cooked through, there should be some oily, greasy, fat shining in the skillet. This is important: do not drain it. You want the fat to get well acquainted with the flour you are about to sprinkle all over the skillet.

Stir the flour all around, and let it gently cook in the skillet for about two minutes. It should turn into a sort of paste as it combines with the fat from the sausage. I like to start the seasoning process now. I add quite a bit of black pepper at this point, probably close to a teaspoon. Once the black pepper hits the skillet, the aroma of sausage gravy really starts to waft through your house and wake people who are sleeping. I add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt now too. If you're feeling extra bold, add a couple of sprinkles of rubbed sage at this point too.

To the hot skillet, you will add both kinds of milk while stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon or a whisk while keeping the heat at a medium low. Stir constantly to avoid lumps.  The mixture will be pretty thin at this point, but you need to keep your heat at low to medium and patiently keep stirring. Turning your heat up to make this process go faster will risk scorching the whole batch.

As it starts to thicken, the mixture will stick to your spoon.

When it is ready the gravy will have a shiny look in the skillet, and it will be thick on your spoon.

 When it reaches this stage, it is ready to be spooned over the luscious biscuits. This makes enough gravy for each member of our family with none to spare. I don't like how this gravy reheats, so I try to only make what we will use in one meal. My husband likes to eat his with an over-medium egg on the top, so that's what I made. He's my favorite in the whole wide world.

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.