Biscuits and gravy is a classic Southern comfort food consisting of flaky buttermilk biscuits smothered in a creamy, thick sausage gravy. The dish is traditionally served for breakfast or brunch and relies on high-quality ingredients like cold butter for the biscuits and pork breakfast sausage for the gravy.
Biscuits
Homemade buttermilk biscuits or a can of your favorite canned biscuits.
Ingredients
- 1 lb (455 g) pork breakfast sausage — sage flavored recommended
- 1/4 cup (31 g) all-purpose (plain) flour
- 2 1/2 cups (590 ml) whole milk
- Sprinkle of crushed red pepper (optional)
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Place sausage in a skillet over medium/high heat. Use a spatula or wooden spoon to break up and crumble sausage as it cooks until completely browned and no pink remains.
- Don’t drain the skillet — you want at least 1–2 tablespoons of grease. Drain only if you have significantly more than that.
- Sprinkle flour evenly over the sausage crumbles. Stir frequently until flour is absorbed, about 1 minute.
- Slowly add the milk into your skillet, stirring and incorporating as you go. Do not dump it all in at once or you will have a clumpy mess. Add crushed red pepper if desired.
- Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture has thickened to your desired consistency.
- Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm over biscuits.
What You’re Learning
Biscuits and gravy is your introduction to the roux — the cooked paste of fat and flour that thickens liquids into sauces. It is one of the most important techniques in both American and French cooking. The sequence here: brown sausage, fat stays in the pan, flour absorbs the fat, milk is added slowly while stirring, and the starch granules swell and thicken the liquid into gravy. Every bechamel, every country gravy, every pan sauce built on a roux follows the same steps. Learn it once and you have it for every recipe that asks for it.
You are also learning to read a sauce as it cooks. Gravy thickens as it heats and continues to thicken slightly as it cools. If you pull it off heat when it looks exactly right, it may be too thick by the time it hits the biscuit. Pull it just before — when it coats the back of a spoon but still flows freely. This is a judgment call you will make better every time you do it.
Notes
- Sage sausage makes a real difference. The herbs season the gravy as the sausage cooks. Plain pork sausage produces a blander result. Jimmy Dean sage-flavored is widely available and works well.
- Keep at least 2 tablespoons of fat in the pan. You need enough to properly absorb the flour. If you have significantly more, pour off the excess — but don’t drain it clean or the gravy won’t thicken properly.
- Add milk slowly. The first addition should be a small splash, stirred in completely before adding more. Dump it all in at once and the flour paste can’t dissolve evenly — you’ll get lumps that won’t cook out.
- Gravy thickens as it sits. Pull it off heat when it’s slightly thinner than you want it on the biscuit. It will tighten up in the pan and on the plate.
- Canned biscuits work fine. The gravy is the recipe. Use Grands or whatever you have — this is not a day for perfectionism on the biscuit side.
