I've always been hesitant to make biscuits from scratch because they usually never turn out as good as the rolls of biscuits you buy from the store. You know, the rolls you have to pop open that usually scare you half to death when they do finally pop open. I found a recipe for biscuits on Pinterest and thought what the heck, I tweaked the recipe a little and made the fluffiest, flakiest biscuits ever.
Biscuit ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour + more for working the dough
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold stick butter cut into small cubes
3/4 cup milk & heavy cream mixture
Gravy ingredients:
1 package pork sausage (preferably mild, but it's your preference).
butter if the sausage doesn't produce enough grease
about 2 tablespoons flour
about 4 cups milk
salt
pepper
Biscuit Directions:
For the biscuits, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Put a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl, then sprinkle the cubed butter on top of the dry mixture. The next step called for a pastry cutter, but I don't have one so I just used a potato masher to combine the butter into the flour. mash the butter into the flour until it's evenly distributed. Then mix half milk and half heavy cream in a 3/4 measuring cup. Pour the milk into the bowl and mix into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon, and then with your hands. If the dough doesn't stay together, then add the tiniest amount of milk, about half a teaspoon at a time until the dough forms a ball and stays together. Be sure not to add too much milk, you don't want the dough to be sticky.
Sprinkle some flour on the counter and then flatten the dough until it's about 1 inch thick. Then using a small glass or a circle cookie cutter, cut out the biscuits. You'll have to reform a ball with the dough and then re-flatten it a couple of times to get all of the biscuits you can out of it.
Place the biscuits with their sides touching on the prepared baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes-- until the tops are golden brown like the first picture.
Gravy Directions:
Start your gravy by cooking the sausage in a cast iron skillet on medium heat. As the sausage cooks, use a wooden spoon to separate the sausage into small pieces.
Once your sausage is cooked through (no more pink) take it out of the pan using a slotted spoon and set it aside on a papertowel on a plate. Be sure to leave the grease in the pan.
You should have about 2-4 tablespoons of grease in the pan, just eyeball it. If your sausage didn't leave enough grease in the pan, then add in stick butter 1 tablespoon at a time until there is an even layer of grease at the bottom of the pan. Reduce heat to medium-low.
Next, is the tricky part. Sprinkle the flour over the pan one tablespoon at a time. Using your wooden spoon, stir in the flour, be sure that it doesn't burn. If there's still a lot of grease in the pan, add in another spoonful. Keep adding flour and stirring until all of the grease is absorbed by the flour. Let the flour cook for about 30 seconds. If you don't let the flour taste cook out the gravy will taste like flour.
Whisk in the milk a little at a time. Maybe half a cup each time you add it. Be sure to use a whisk so that the flour breaks apart. When the gravy becomes thick, go ahead and add in another half of a cup of milk. Whisk that in until it becomes thick. Continue this process until the gravy no longer becomes really thick. If the gravy is too thin, let it simmer on the stove until it thickens.
Add the sausage back into the gravy.
Add in salt and pepper to taste.
留言