Wednesday, July 01, 2009

I shouldn't have to do this

This, being learn how to make sausage gravy, said gravy to pour over a biscuit, the second part of the post.

Gravy first. Consistency: not watery and not paste, erring on the heavy side of liquid. Sausage: chunks, “flavor” doesn’t get it. Spice: it needs to be peppery, I’m not sure what else.

Then the biscuit: dense, not fluffy, not soft. Kind of like a steak or burger: charred on the outside and melting on the inside. Except, charred isn’t the word I’m looking for. Crust? No, but almost. And buttery, an absolute. For breakfast, just plain. For lunch or dinner some spice. Breakfast, Mrs. Winners. The other meals, Popeye's. Close, but there must be better.

And, you can’t get any of this in Atlanta, which prides itself as being the capitol of the South, other than the fast food biscuits. How can that be?

A quest! Any suggestions are appreciated.

5 comments:

Life Hiker said...

I hate to admit it, but the Good Witch opens a can of Campbell's sausage gravy when I get a hankering for it. She's a good cook, but making sausage gravy for one person from scratch is a bit of a pain in the u-no-wat.

I've had a lot of sausage gravies, including some great homemade ones like I'll get next week on vacation in rural Kentucky. But the Campbell's is really pretty good. Not much to it, actually.

Dave said...

Send me some from KY. Once I figure out how to make it, I'm sure I'll freeze some.

Jeni said...

I can send you my recipe for the gravy, Dave -the one I use when I actually make sausage gravy from scratch. It's pretty good and you can control the "pastyness" very easily too. In a pinch though, I sometimes buy packets of dry gravy mix -I forget now the brand name bit it is labeled "pepper gravy" so all you need then is to brown your sausage (with a bit of chopped onion, of course!) It's fast and easy -keeps quite well to for a couple of days so you can enjoy it for more than one breakfast. Biscuits, my daughter gets some kind of biscuits that come in a bag, from the freezer that are excellent! I'm too cheap to buy them though! So I usually use the "Grands" if I can.

Jenn said...

All righty, what I do is fry my sausage good, not burned but so it is a little crispy. I use Jimmy Dean's original (in a roll and slice it about 1/2 inch thick). I take the sausage out of that pan and add my desiered amount of water to the sausage grease, add cracked pepper corn (you know where you grind it yourself or take a hammer and crack a few of them up, the more the merrier for me and sometimes I will add the pizza pepper) I bring that to a boil and instead of using flour to thicken it I use corn starch (predissolve it according to package directions, you can always add more if it is not thick enough but it is a pain in the ass to thin back out, keep that in mind) when it is thick to my liking is when I put in my chunked up sausage.

Now, because I can't stand bland white gravy, sometimes I look thru the spice rack and pizazz it up. Steak seasoning works great but not the Montreal because it is to salty. Mrs. Dash has a few flavors I like. I am also fond of putting dried onions in it when the water mix is boiling, oh and that already pressed garlic (but I love garlic, i think it should go in everything).

like Life Hiker, I also like the Campbell's sausage gravy. I would like to be able to make it like the white gravy on the dried beef (shit on a shingle) that you get from Stofers. I like that a lot!

Hope that helps! I honestly think that the secret is in the sausage you use.

Dave said...

Thanks ladies.