Old Fashioned Biscuits and Gravy
Today we are making up some Old Fashioned Biscuits and we aren’t leaving them topless. We are going to slather them with some good white gravy with sausage. I’ll tell you right off, the best thing about these biscuits… there’s no rise time!
FLOUR IS KING
First thing, you want to start with some good flour, it is a staple you must have. I typically use an all-purpose flour. That way you don’t have to have a bunch of different bags of flour laying around the house. But more important is the brand. Don’t get the cheap stuff! My favorites are King Arthur or Peter Pan, they always do me right in any kind of weather or at any elevation.
When you add all your dry ingredients (sugar, salt, baking powder) one of the most important is cream of tartar. This is going to really give those biscuits a jump! That is why there is no rise time in this recipe.
BUTTER!
My next tip in this recipe is one of my favorite ingredients, butter. This butter has to be chilled, it can’t be soft. Use a stick and a half of thinly sliced butter. You will want a pie crumb cutter to break the butter pieces up, but we want to leave it in big enough chunks to make these biscuits have that oh so buttery flakey taste. You can also use a fork to crumb this butter up, but you don’t want it fine like cracker crumbs.
Tip: Freeze the butter and cut using a cheese grater.
GOOD ‘OL BUTTERMILK
Now at this point I like to take one cackleberry (thats an egg folks), I like to whip it up just enough to get it a little liquified. We will then add in our buttermilk or in case you don’t have any on hand, you can substitute:
Buttermilk substitute: 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar with 1 cup of regular moo juice (milk).
Mesquite Wood Whisk
Handmade in Texas with mesquite wood and features the Kent Rollins logo. Approximately 12-inches total length and 1-inch wide handle. 304 stainless steel (medium weight) whisk. Care instructions: Lightly rinse the wood with warm water. Let dry thoroughly, lightly oil with food grade or wood oil.
112 in stock
Mix all this in with the dry ingredients and kinda stir it in together. You will notice it’s still a little wet. Slowly add in a little flour at a time by hand until it’s just dry enough to stay together but doesn’t to stick to you hands.
KNEAD TIME
At this point you can go ahead and flour up a board and go to kneading this dough for about a minute, just keep rolling it over getting it all good and incorporated into itself, mashing that butter all up in there. After this you can either flatten it out by hand or roll it out to about 1/2-inch thickness.
CUTTING UP
At this point you can take a biscuit cutter, (or an old green chile can works great), cut them out and place on a greased baking pan, cast iron skillet or Dutch oven close together. Once you have this first batch cut, go ahead and just kind of mash it back together but not too much because an over worked biscuit is a dry biscuit. With this amount of dough you should get about 15 biscuits.
BAKE ‘EM UP
Slap them in an oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until light golden brown. Now at this point you can lightly brush them with melted butter and serve… but we ain’t through yet! We got to have some goodness to go over top of these!
GRAVY TRAIN
Now folks when I was growing up, I was never taught to use a recipe to make gravy. It was just grease, flour and milk or cream… whatever you got. We just made it until it was the right consistency, well today you are in luck cause down below we have an actual recipe.
You can use any meat grease, bacon or oil to start…
But I think bacon grease makes the best gravy!
I start out with some good bacon grease, let it get hot. Once the grease is hot enough (drop a couple drops of flour in and if it sizzles it’s hot enough). sift a little flour into the grease and go to stirring and mashing it with a spatula (this is my favorite gravy making spatula here).
Go ahead and stir this into the grease really well until you have a decent consistency of roux. Go ahead and slowly start adding in the milk (warm milk works better here). And keep stirring constantly to make sure it’s smooth. Add in more milk until you get the consistency that you want. Go ahead and add the previously browned hog meat (sausage) into the mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve over those hot flaky biscuits and there you have yourself a meal.
Praise the Lord and pass the biscuits and Lord while you got them there would you smooth some of that good creamy gravy all over the top of them? Y’all be sure to check out the video for more tips, tricks and foolery.
Old Fashioned Biscuits and Gravy – Cowboy Kent Rollins
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour plus more for sprinkling
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 heaping tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 3/4 cup chilled butter thinly sliced
- 1 large egg lightly beaten
- 1 ¼ cups buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter a 12 inch dutch oven, cast iron skillet or baking pan
- In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and cream of tartar.
- With a pastry cutter or fork, cut the butter into the flour mixture until the butter chunks break down slightly. You don’t want to work it to a cracker crumb consistency, but leave some larger butter flakes.
- In a small bowl combine the egg and buttermilk. Stir into the flour mixture just until combined. The dough will be a little sticky. You should be able to see the butter pieces in the dough.
- Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface. Flour your hands and knead the dough 10 to 15 times. If the dough is still tacky, knead in a little more flour to form a soft dough.
- Pat or roll the dough out to about ¾ to 1-inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter.
- Place the biscuits in the skillet, dutch oven or baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until a light golden brown on top and bottom. Brush the tops with melted butter and serve immediately.
Homemade Gravy – Cowboy Kent Rollins
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup meat grease sausage, bacon, or other meat grease
- 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 to 2 cups milk warmed
- 1/2 ground pork breakfast sausage cooked
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat the grease over medium heat in a large cast iron skillet.
- Sift in the flour and let it come to a boil for 2 minutes, stirring and mashing down constantly with a flat spatula.
- Slowly stir in 11/2 cups of the milk and bring back to a light boil. Continue stirring until the mixture is smooth and reaches the desired consistency, about 2 minutes. You can add more milk or water to thin the gravy, if necessary.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot over biscuits.