Biscuits and Sausage Gravy
I hadn’t eaten biscuits and gravy since moving from Canada and after watching many episodes of triple D, I thought it high time that I made me some biscuits and gravy.
The first time I had biscuits I was a bit taken aback as I was expecting just that. A girlfriend’s father was banging on about cooking some biscuits, so I thought oh, perhaps chocolate chip or something along those lines. Of course in North America, what we in the the UK call biscuits are cookies and biscuits are basically scones! So I was disappointed not to get my chocolate chip cookies and there wasn’t even jam and clotted cream for the scones!
In North America biscuits are normally served with gravy and most often served at breakfast usually with a sausage gravy. You can also get pancakes with egg, sausage, bacon and maple syrup at breakfast, so scones with sausage gravy is not such a strange thing! But I didn’t fancy eating this for breakfast so I dished it up to my family for the first time and I had some great help from my eldest son, who assisted with the biscuits.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
For the sausage gravy
- 4-500g sausage meat or sausages removed from the skin
- 2 tbsps all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
For the biscuits
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (225g), plus extra for dusting
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 7 tbsps cold unsalted butter, diced
- 3/4 cup milk
Preparation method:
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 240°c. Line a baking sheet with two layers of parchment paper and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Break 2 tablespoons of the butter into the flour and mix with your fingertips until completely absorbed, then work the remaining butter into the flour until it is in even pieces about the size of a pea. Or alternatively put the dry ingredients into a mixer and let that do the work for you! Gently stir the milk into the flour mixture to make a loose dough or if using a mixer slowly pour the milk into the bowl.
Dust a clean work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto it. Pat the dough into a rectangle just over 1cm thick. Fold the dough in thirds like a business letter. (For a flakier biscuit repeat the folding a second time.) Pat the dough into a 12 by 20cm rectangle about 2cm thick. Use a 5 – 8 cm round cutter and cut out 6 biscuits and place them onto the prepared baking sheet. Press together the rest of the dough and cut 2 more biscuits if possible.
Mix a drop of milk and melted butter together in a small bowl and lightly brush the tops of the biscuits then bake until lightly browned, approx. 15 minutes. Cool on a rack for 5 minutes before serving.
Heat a large pan over medium-high heat , add the sausage meat and break it up with a wooden spoon and fry until well browned and cooked through.
Using a slotted spoon remove the sausage meat to a bowl, leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Whisk the flour into the fat and whilst stirring cook for about 1 minute. Keep whisking or stirring and pour the milk slowly into the pan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently for 2 minutes, stir in the sausage and season with salt and pepper.
To serve cut the biscuits in half as you would with a bread roll place on plates and then pour over some of the gravy and serve immediately.
Enjoy!