Eating In: Comfort Food – Biscuits and Gravy
By Kevin Grzyb in Food on Oct 25, 2005 6:10PM
Biscuits and Gravy are a culinary delight of epic magnitude, the ultimate in comfort food and a truck stop/greasy spoon epicurean delight. They are all things both good and bad; pork, with the requisite pork fat, starch in two 
forbidden forms (for our carb counting friends) and dairy/milk fat. In other words, they are awesome on a cold wet/snowy fall winter morning. We especially love them on a cold morning when you actually intend to go outside and work (or play for hours); they’re perfect before cutting a few cords of firewood or duck hunting. There is no vegetarian alternative and the only way to lighten up the recipe is to use skim milk (as we have here) and it works fine.
This is a “cheat” of sorts, because we didn’t make our own biscuits, we could have, time permitting, but that didn’t happen – there were pumpkins to be picked. So, start by making a roll of biscuits according to the recipe, then to the “gravy”:
Get a one pound package of pork sausage, regular or flavored will work. Start by frying up the sausage over med heat in an un-greased skillet breaking up the sausage with a spatula. You want to get the pieces down to about the size of a marble. If you don’t know what size a marble is, put down the spatula and go back to your childhood, you missed something (while there go check out ‘jacks’, too) Once, the sausage is cooked through, start slowly adding ½ cup of flour (all purpose) the flour will coat the sausage pieces and start to brown, the longer you let the flour brown, the darker your gravy. Next add 2 cups of milk, ½ cup at a time, stirring constantly. Add a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. The mixture will begin to thicken almost immediately, and then cook it until you can drag the spatula across the bottom of the pan and you leave a trail. At this point, you can break from tradition and mess around with the accents. We used the sausage with sage in it and added about 2 or 3 teaspoons of fresh thyme from the window box. We’ve also chopped in some chipotle peppers and added a dob of the adobo sauce for a hot and smoky gravy, or you can add any of the growing number of Tobasco sauces. This is also a great starter for Thanksgiving Day if you’re going to eat an early dinner with family. Start with your biscuits and gravy, play some football with the cousins, watch some football with grandpa and then chow down on the big bird. A day well spent.
Enjoy.
Photos by author.