Biscuits and sausage gravy is a tasty Southern classic. The first time I had biscuits and gravy was at a popular Toronto diner White Lily Diner in Toronto’s East End. Check them out if you want phenomenal brunch food but if you want to try your hand at this simple yet decadent dish, keep reading. Biscuits and gravy is exactly what is sounds like, rich, flaky buttermilk biscuits topped with a creamy sausage gravy. I opted for maple flavoured sausage to give the gravy a slightly sweet tasty but you can truly go for plain sausages or really any other flavour of pork sausage you think would go great with biscuits. I typically stay away from spicy sausages. The milk based gravy is flavoured with with poultry seasoning, but simple sage would be a great substitute, lots of black pepper, and salt to taste. Lastly, the sausage gravy is topped with a wonderful sunny side up egg and sprinkled with fresh parsley. If you want to make an impressive Southern brunch that is actually quite easy to make, this recipe is for you.
Southern Biscuits and Gravy
Ingredients
Gravy
- 380 grams maple flavoured breakfast sausage removed from casings
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 cups whole milk
- 1/2 teaspoon – 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
- salt and pepper to taste
Biscuits
- 2 cups 250 grams all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons 85 grams unsalted frozen butter
- 3/4 cups buttermilk + 2 tablespoons for topping
- 2 tablespoon of melted butter to finish off biscuits
Serving
- 4-6 eggs
- chopped parsley
Instructions
Biscuits
- Preheat oven for 425 degree farenehit.
- Mix your dry ingredients together; flour, sugar, salt, baking powder.
- Grate frozen butter into flour mixture. (You can place all ingredients in food processor and pulse instead).
- Add buttermilk and mix using a fork until you get a crumbly dough.
- Pour dough out onto a lightly floured counter and bring together forming a rectangle. Roll out dough slightly using a rolling pin, using extra flour if necessary to prevent sticking. Roll out dough to about 1 inch thick.
- Using a pastry scraper to help you, fold your rectangular dough in half.
- Pat down and roll out dough until it is an inch thick and fold in half again.
- Repeat 2 more times, for a total of 4 folds and roll your dough out until it is about 1/2 and inch thick and use pastry cutter to cut out 6 rounds. I great substitute for a pastry cutter, or round cookie cutter if a drinking gland or if you have one, the top of a cocktail shaker.
- Keep bringing together scraps of dough, rolling it out until you get 6 rounds. If you have less than 6 rounds, your biscuits will probably be on the thicker side which is not an issue but you may have to increase cook time by a minute. If you have more than 6 rounds with that amount of dough, you biscuits may be too thin.
- Brush the top of your biscuits with buttermilk and bake in the over at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes until nicely browned.
- Brush with melted butter while they are still hot and set aside while you make your gravy.
Gravy
- In a skillet or pan, place your sausage removed from casings, and brown breaking up sausage into bits as you cook. Can take anywhere from 5-10 minutes to fully cook sausage depending on size of pan. Take out sausage and set aside.
- Add butter into a shall frying pan and allow to melt (you can use the same pan you made sausage in).
- Add flour and whisk for at least a 1-2 minutes until flour and butter mixture starts to brown but does not burn.
- Add your milk and continue whisking until gravy starts to thicken.
- Season with salt, poultry seasoning and black pepper.
- Add your sausage to gravy and set aside until ready to serve.
- You can make your gravy as thick or as thin as you like by adjusting milk. Remember the gravy will thicken as it sits so I tend to make it on the thinner side so by the time I serve it thicken up a bit more.
To serve
- Open up biscuits or leave whole, top with a healthy portion of your sausage gravy and top with a fried egg. Finish with more pepper and chopped parsley if you like.
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