I am not much for New Years resolutions but one of the things I would like to do this year is make some of my favorite foods that I have never cooked before. For example, I love hot dogs, and yet I have never made hot dogs, I have also never made chicken fried steak, pot roast, ramen (like real ramen from scratch), or biscuits and gravy. That all is going to change this year. Of course I will probably have to figure out how to incorporate wild game into this dishes but that shouldn't be to hard.
I had recently made my first batch of
breakfast sausage using some antelope that was given to me and it turned out incredible. But after you make breakfast patties or links and use it in a breakfast sandwich what else can you do with breakfast sausage. That's when it hit me that I have never made biscuits and gravy. A good sausage gravy is a hard thing to beat and as cold as it has been here in Minnesota a nice hardy breakfast seemed appropriate.
If you are anything like me there is a good chance that you keep a jar of bacon fat in the fridge just in case you need it. This is one of those cases where I needed a little extra fat. In order to make a god gravy you need fat and flour and milk. My antelope breakfast sausage is delicious but it doesn't have a lot of fat in it. I mixed 4 pounds of antelope to 1 pound of pork fat and antelope is very lean so there isn't much fat that comes out to make a good gravy. I used a generous 2-3 tablespoons of rendered bacon fat to brown my sausage. Because my sausage is very well seasoned I decided to hold off on adding any extra salt or pepper until the end just to make sure it wasn't overly salty.
As far as biscuits go I would like to tell you that I have an old family recipe that I use, but I don't. I should probably add biscuits to the list of things I should make this year. I use Pillsbury grands, they make a southern style biscuit and they are the easiest thing to make when you need them. Perhaps I need to make some from scratch just so I can compare and see if it is worth the effort to make them from scratch.
My Biscuits and Gravy
1 pound of breakfast sausage (my recipe is
here)
2-3 tablespoons of bacon fat
1/4 cup of flour
2 1/2 cups of milk
salt and pepper to taste
Pillsbury biscuits
2 eggs
1. Heat the bacon fat and then brown the breakfast sausage, I like to cook it a little long just so I get some of those crunchy little brown bits.
2. when the sausage is browned add the flour and stir until fully incorporated with the fat
3. stir in the milk and stir until gravy reaches a consistency you like. taste and season with salt and pepper
I like my biscuits and gravy with and egg so I fry a couple of eggs and then layer. Cut the biscuit in half put the bottom half down spoon on some gravy then an egg ten the top half of the biscuit and then smother in gravy. There really isn't anything better before you head out for a day of ice fishing.
