One Good Way to Ruin Your New Year’s Resolutions
Late on Thanksgiving Eve (or perhaps early Thanksgiving morning), R Raisinhater and I were lapping up the last of the wine and reminiscing about some of our finest breakfasts. Emboldened by drink, we vowed to recreate one of our favorites, biscuits with sausage gravy.
We aren’t Southern, we have no background in this, no family tradition to draw from, but Mom or Dad remembered spotting the recipe in the New York Times Heritage Cookbook (probably 15 years ago) and dug out the volume.
Sausage and Cream Gravy over Biscuits
1½ lbs sausage meat (we used both breakfast sausage and Italian sausage with no noticeable difference)
1/3 cup flour
½ cup water
2 cups heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste (I used only pepper, and lots of it)
6 hot biscuits, split
Break sausage into small pieces and fry in a heavy skillet until brown and cooked through. Remove and drain.
Remove all but 1/3 cup fat from the skillet. (We used fairly lean sausage and ended up with only 2-3 T fat in the skillet, this was sufficient.) Sprinkle the flour over the fat in the skillet and mix, gradually add water, stirring constantly.
Stir in the cream, bring to a boil, turn down heat to a rowdy simmer, stirring constantly until flour clumps break up (this may take a while, but they will dissolve eventually).
Return sausage to the skillet and continue simmering and stirring until desired consistency is reached. Serve over split biscuits.
I suggest serving with Bloody Marys.
The recipe suggests that you should shape the sausage into patties and serve them over biscuits topped with gravy, but I prefer crumbling the sausage into the gravy, because that’s the way they do it at the Lee Hi truckstop in Lexington, Virginia.
The first time we made this, we were quite concerned about the flour clumps. Mom Raisinhater got in there with an immersion blender and sprayed all of us with hot cream, but the clumps resisted. Apparently they just like to take their sweet time about it.
It was so good we had it again on Christmas Day. Perhaps this is the birth of a new tradition. As you eat this, you will feel your arteries stiffen. You will not care, because you will also feel your hangover magically disappear. You also may need a nap.
We aren’t Southern, we have no background in this, no family tradition to draw from, but Mom or Dad remembered spotting the recipe in the New York Times Heritage Cookbook (probably 15 years ago) and dug out the volume.
Sausage and Cream Gravy over Biscuits
1½ lbs sausage meat (we used both breakfast sausage and Italian sausage with no noticeable difference)
1/3 cup flour
½ cup water
2 cups heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste (I used only pepper, and lots of it)
6 hot biscuits, split
Break sausage into small pieces and fry in a heavy skillet until brown and cooked through. Remove and drain.
Remove all but 1/3 cup fat from the skillet. (We used fairly lean sausage and ended up with only 2-3 T fat in the skillet, this was sufficient.) Sprinkle the flour over the fat in the skillet and mix, gradually add water, stirring constantly.
Stir in the cream, bring to a boil, turn down heat to a rowdy simmer, stirring constantly until flour clumps break up (this may take a while, but they will dissolve eventually).
Return sausage to the skillet and continue simmering and stirring until desired consistency is reached. Serve over split biscuits.
I suggest serving with Bloody Marys.
The recipe suggests that you should shape the sausage into patties and serve them over biscuits topped with gravy, but I prefer crumbling the sausage into the gravy, because that’s the way they do it at the Lee Hi truckstop in Lexington, Virginia.
The first time we made this, we were quite concerned about the flour clumps. Mom Raisinhater got in there with an immersion blender and sprayed all of us with hot cream, but the clumps resisted. Apparently they just like to take their sweet time about it.
It was so good we had it again on Christmas Day. Perhaps this is the birth of a new tradition. As you eat this, you will feel your arteries stiffen. You will not care, because you will also feel your hangover magically disappear. You also may need a nap.
posted by MeBeth at
5:08 PM
4 Comments:
Oh, yum! Not a bad tradition to start! I'm hungry now!
Paz
Everything goods good with bloody mary's! Or any alcohol :p
Wow. I haven't heard the two words sausage and gravy since cafeteria-dining at UVA. We used to go to the athlete caf after swim practice and we had a table of sausage gravy eaters. BRings back some fine (if not flabby) memories-ha! Yours look like the gourmet version and I'd love to give them a try.
*drool* To hell with resolutions, it's only the first week!
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