Geeze Louise! I wasn’t going to cook at all today but an hour before supper I realized that I had taken all the cranberry biscuits up to the nursing home last night to share with mama and her friends and the night staff. Nothing to do then but make biscuits! Not quite as fancy as the sour cream and cranberry biscuits but homemade biscuits and sausage gravy is still a great supper for a snowy night! Apologies for posting such a simple recipe but I know I have several nieces and nephews who love biscuits and gravy who also never make either. Let’s get our aprons on, y’all, and go for some B&G at home!
I used Martha White self-rising soft southern flour for the biscuits, and since I was out of last week’s buttermilk, I got buttermilk by mixing a tablespoon of white vinegar into a cup of milk. Use your fingers to cut in the shortening and work fast; the feel of the Martha White flour is silky and smooth and it produces the flakiest biscuits around. Use a biscuit cutter to shape them the size you want, kneading the dough again quickly as you cut them.
As for milk sausage gravy, that is the easiest thing in the world to make so don’t get any crazy ideas about fancy-smanchy gravy adding no telling what herbs and spices to it. You need only fried sausage, a few tablespoons of flour, lots of black pepper, and a cup and a half of milk if there’s no more than 2-3 of you eating; use all 3 cups of milk if you’re feeding four or more people. This is the recipe for B&G from my “Missouri to Maui” cookbook; use it to get supper on the table in 30 minutes if you’re willing to walk to the kitchen and make those biscuits. Fry the sausage and make the gravy as the biscuits bake then just call ’em to the table!
Biscuits & Gravy
Ingredients for Biscuits
2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp. sugar
1/3 cup Crisco shortening
3/4 cup plus 2 T. buttermilk
2 T. butter, melted
Directions Preheat oven to 450. Combine flour and sugar in large bowl; mix well. Cut in shortening with pastry blender, a fork, or your fingers until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk; stir with a fork until soft dough forms and mixture begins to pull away from sides of bowl.
Knead dough on lightly floured surface just until smooth. Roll out dough to 1/2” thickness. Cut with floured 2 1/2” round cutter. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until golden brown. Brush with melted butter. Serve warm.
For Pork Sausage Gravy:
12 oz. bulk pork sausage
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. coarse ground black pepper
3 cups milk
Directions After frying sausage, remove from skillet then add flour, to 2 T. of the grease. With wire whisk, stir well, scraping the browned sausage bits from the pan until the flour browns.. Add the milk, salt and pepper and cook over medium heat until thickened, whisking constantly. Crumble in a few pieces of the sausage and stir to blend. Split warm biscuits and place on serving plates and serve the gravy over warm, split, or torn up pieces of biscuits.