Biscuits and gravy

[WinchesterM1]

Growing up mom would make biscuits and gravy with a fried pork chop, fried apples, fried eggs, and home made apple butter!! We still eat that at least once a month. The pork chops are from pigs we raised, the apple butter is made in a 30 gallon copper kettle that was passed down to my wife(they get passed down from mother to daughter in our case daughter in law) my wife is the 6th generation with that kettle, the apples are from my pack hard next to the chicken coop where the eggs come from every morning.

That meal made me into the 6’3” 250lb man I am today lol

[rl69]

Dang had my heart set on some biscuits and gravy ...... Just enogh milk for the biscuits ...... Tomorrow is another day

[snowwolfe]

A few tips I discovered that makes it better. This stuff requires a lot of salt and pepper. Taste often as you are cooking it. We use Lawrys seasoned salt but use it sparingly as a little goes a long way. And use whole milk, not 2%.

[Outpost75]

It is permitted to serve SOS over biscuits!

Leatherneck's World-Famous SOS Recipe

A number of years ago, a Marine artillery brigadier general requested/ordered that a recipe for the Marine Corps’ famous SOS be developed so that it could be served to a small group of about eight persons. This way the general could have his wife make it. The official recipe for mess halls is for serving 300 or more. The challenge of accurately paring down the recipe fell to the general’s chief field cook, Master Sergeant Bernie Parker. After many tired and a few mistakes “Top” Parker came up with the following near-perfect recipe:

Recipe for “Marine Breakfast” (Serves eight "Metrosexual Girly Men" or two hungry US Marines)

½ pound ground beef (ground chuck for flavor)
1-tablespoon bacon fat (lard/Crisco or butter)
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups whole milk (add more milk if you want it thinner)
1/8-teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste
8 slices of dry toast
Using a large skillet (12-14 inches), crumb1e and brown the ground beef with fat and salt. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool slightly. Mix in the flour until all of the meat is covered, using all of the flour. Replace the skillet on the heat and stir in the milk. Keep stirring until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens (boil a minimum of one minute).

Serve over the toast. Salt and pepper to taste.

Forwarded via email by 1stSgt. Philip D. Ciofalo, USMC (ret) Berlinville, Pa.

Another recipe from Leatherneck Magazine, December 2005, Sound Off Section

1 1/2 pounds extra lean hamburger or ground chuck
2 tbsp. oleo or butter
1 cup chopped onion
3 tbsp. flour
2 tsp. granulated garlic
2 tbsp. soy sauce (or less to taste)
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste
sliced bread or biscuits
Brown the meat, then drain.
Add oleo. Stir in the onions and cook until you can see through them.
Add flour, stir and cook two to three minutes. Add garlic, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and mix thoroughly. Add milk and stir until it thickens.

Serve over bread, toast or biscuits

Camp Lejeune's SOS Recipe for Manly Men

1 lb. lean hamburger
3 tsp. beef stock powder
3 tbsp. plain flour
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
½ tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 pint whole milk
Brown hamburger. Add beef stock powder, flour, salt, pepper and then cook.
Add Worcestershire sauce.
Add milk and stir over low heat until thickened.
Serve on burnt toast.

[lightman]

My wife was teaching Home Economics at the College Level when I met here. She was a formally trained cook and then as now, a REALLY excellent cook! My mother did not measure anything. It was just a pinch of this and a dab of that. My sweet wife, would actually measure my mother's "pinch" until she got it exactly right. The upside is my wife's cornbread was and is more consistent than my beloved mother'

I have been blessed. Dale53

My Wife learned to cook from her Mother who didn't measure anything either. My Wife did the same thing, measuring the "pinches" to arrive at a repeatable recipe.

[429421Cowboy]

One more thing to add to this, out of earshot of my cardiologist. We typically make it with whole milk, or cream if we have it, evaporated (Carnation) milk if that's all I have. But growing up, my second family had Jersey milk cows what would leave 3" of cream at the top of the milk pail, and I don't think anything else makes better gravy. Comes out bright yellow if you don't brown the flour good.
I am going to try soy and Worchestershire in my next batch though.
Ma taught me to add a little dash of poultry seasoning to it at the end, and I have added to that by dusting my biscuits with a little bit before putting them in the oven.

[Thumbcocker]

Niemurg's steakhouse in Effingham Illinois has a Sunday breakfast buffet from 6 to 10 am that includes biscuits, sausage gravy, bacon, 2 kinds of link sausage, scrambled eggs. Cheese hash browns, fruit, pancakes, and pastries. Two people can have all they can eat for under $20. The ultimate way for an unsuccessful deer hunter to thaw out. A friend of Mrs. Thumbcocker's described it as "white people soul food ".

[lightman]

"white people soul food ".

I'm hoping the new upgraded site will have a like button!

[Idaho45guy]

I'm hoping the new upgraded site will have a like button!

Me too! I officially "like" your post!

And the tips on using whole milk or cream instead of 2% are spot on.

I substituted heavy whipping cream for the normal 2% milk in the mashed potatoes this past Thanksgiving and they were amazing.

[Thundarstick]

A few tips I discovered that makes it better. This stuff requires a lot of salt and pepper. Taste often as you are cooking it. We use Lawrys seasoned salt but use it sparingly as a little goes a long way. And use whole milk, not 2%.

My Granny (from down the calf killer in Sparta) would have slapped your cops if she'd seen someone put SEASONING SALT in gravy! Are you really from Tennessee?



These biscuit and gravy threads are about like chili threads, or oil threads on a motorcycle forum!

[Outpost75]

My Granny (from down the calf killer in Sparta) would have slapped your cops if she'd seen someone put SEASONING SALT in gravy! Are you really from Tennessee?



These biscuit and gravy threads are about like chili threads, or oil threads on a motorcycle forum!

My Grandma used nothing but salt, black pepper and cayenne.

[WRideout]

When I lived in Knoxville, TN, I actually had an entire conversation with someone about biscuits. I finally figured out that biscuits are to Southerners as tortillas are to Mexicans; it's not just food, it's a cultural identifier.

BTW: SOS over anything needs just a dab of garlic to be perfect.

Wayne

[fcvan]

I had a friend who developed the dreaded 'gluten free' malady. Wheat flour was definitely not on the menu so biscuits and gravy were out. I made a few adjustments to my B&G which he thought were weird . . . Until he tried a taste. I substituted wheat flour for corn masa and made waffles. I substituted the flour with dried potato flakes (instant mashed) and seasoned everything the same. Gravy was either bacon or sausage or both, didn't matter. Sometimes you just have to improvise.

The grand kids love my waffles so I always have some cooked and frozen for emergencies . . . the emergency is they want them now and the iron is heating up for some fresh. Oldest daughter and her 2 are less than a mile away so sometimes I have hot and fresh to serve while her iron heats up. Latest grand kid (middle daughter) was born Thanksgiving, he's not eating waffles yet. Youngest daughter has a 3 year old who loves her some Papa waffles, but her Momma also makes crepes. The almost youngest (youngest daughter is carrying twins) will likely be waffle hounds. As far as B&G, my wife hasn't tried the gluten free B&G yet but her dad lives with us and he will still do the real stuff

[shooterg]

My NaNa Dean would be feeding you biscuits and gravy 10 minutes after you arrived, whoever you were or how many you brought with you ! Cut the biscuits with a drinking glass and they were always perfect. Sausage gravy or milk gravy from bacon fat.
Now my Grandma Blanch made most of her gravy after frying the fatback that also got ate with the biscuit . On a good day, had fried apples with the fatback on a biscuit..mmm mmm ! Homemade sausage and homegrown fatback and homemade biscuits of course . Dang, I'm hungry now !!

[Thundarstick]

Now your talking!

[Outpost75]

My buddy from Texas says that B&G is as good a soul food as can be, for anyone, not just for southerners. I prefer my gravy to have leavings in it from whatever pork was cooked in the skillet prior to the gravy being made. Gotta be cast iron, too.

Wheat and wheat flour, he says, are not "Southern", but originated from the northern states. Flour was provided to native Americans on the reservations by the government, and substituted for masa harina, which is how flour tortiilas came about...

Because wheat was not grown in the South Southern cuisine evolved from a focus on pork and corn (and cornbread). Prior to the advent of reliable refrigeration, a whole beef would spoil before it could be consumed, whereas a pig would not. Sows had at least two litters per year, with anywhere from 8 or 9 young up to maybe 12 or so. Good return on investment. Pigs were cheaper for the farmer to raise (especially the sharecroper and small landholder) compared to beef cattle, which were a rich white man's living, as they required alot of land and hired hands to manage them.

Back in the day, steers weren’t slaughtered at a year of age like they are nowadays; slaughtering was typically done at 5 or 6 years and those beeves were huge - often over 1,000 pounds. Way too much meat to handle without a whole army to feed or a commercial walk-in freezer.

White corn bread with fresh sweet cream butter, sided by grits and a salt-cured ham steak with a couple of eggs was traditionally the best breakfast in the South. Red eye gravy was the preferred lubricant for the meal and is made from the ham leavings in the skillet cooked with black coffee. And it tastes great, BTW.

I’m not sure when hot sauce came into the cuisine down there. I am told by my friend that chiles came into Tex-Mex cuisine from the native American tribes, Apache, Cáhita, Tepehuan, Yaqui, etc. These peppers being similar to the Cayenne and others which which they were familiar, the Creoles pickled them in sea salt and vinegar to make sauces as a way to avoid food rotting without refrigeration by pickling and canninig or bottling it. He says.

"I got into hot sauce as most Anglos probably do - Crystal or Tabasco on the table of the local eatery. Plenty of heat, but not blistering, although their flavor isn’t as well developed. After experimenting with various brands, a couple of pipe welders off oil rigs who were originally Oklahoma and Texas saw me reading the label on a bottle of hot sauce and took the time to delay their beer run a bit to tell me that what they knew from their neck of the woods was that after Anglo people got over their initial dalliance with hot sauce, if lucky they would discover the best, which they said was named Cajun Sunshine. After trying it, I became a believer. Hispanics find it an acceptable substitute for Chulula from south of the border, which is indeed high praise. It can be hard to find, so I buy as many as are on the shelf when I see it. It’s not real hot, but it has enough heat, and more importantly, better flavor than any other hot sauce I’ve tried."

Maybe not "kosher" for real "Southern" gravy, but real popular in south Texas and Oklahoma are sliced pickled jalapeños proginated from tamed jalapeños- not real hot, but very flavorful. Make your biscuits and gravy go over the top by rough chopping a handful, and sprinkling in and stirring into your sausage gravy at the very last minute before ladling over your biscuits. The Texas Department of Education certifies that a half cup of chopped jalapeños constitutes a full serving of vegetables!

[jimlj]

Reading this thread I decided to skip the typical pancakes we have for breakfast on Christmas morning and make some B&G. The problem I'm facing is there will be my wife and I, along with 4 of my adult children with their spouses and a herd of grand kids running around the house. I got to wondering how I was going to make it all come together when I found a recipe for biscuits to make ahead and freeze. Before you purists beat me to within an inch of my life, hear me out. Yesterday I made a bunch of said biscuits. The recipe was nothing special... flour, salt, baking powder, Crisco and buttermilk. I've been experimenting with biscuits for a while now and have found the "all purpose" flour available in my area makes tough biscuits. Reading on the net it seems that "self raising" flour is made from a softer wheat that makes better biscuits. So I skipped the salt and baking powder the recipe called for and used self rising in place of the all purpose flour.
I used
3 cups self rising flour
1 T sugar
2/3 cup Crisco
cut in the Crisco with a pastry blender till it looks like course meal
1 cup buttermilk
mix till the dough pulls from the side of a bowl.
Knead a few times and pat into about a 3/4" thick 8"ish square. Cut with a knife into 16 2" squares. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze 4 hours. Place the frozen biscuits in a zip lock bag and freeze till needed.

I made several batches and froze them yesterday. Today I pulled a couple out and baked them for about 13 minutes @425*. They were not as good as the biscuits my mom used to make, but perfectly edible. In 15 minutes I can now bake enough biscuits for 15 people, and the mess is all cleaned up without the help of my 3 year old grandson. Do I dare try to make the gravy ahead of time?

[GOPHER SLAYER]

My wife and I just returned from Flo's cafe where I enjoyed a plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns and of course biscuits and gravy. What a glorious way to start the day. My wish at this time of years is that every man women and child in the world could eat so well.

[Lloyd Smale]

Thought my dad was strange. His favorite breakfast is fried fatty pork steak and eggs.

Growing up mom would make biscuits and gravy with a fried pork chop, fried apples, fried eggs, and home made apple butter!! We still eat that at least once a month. The pork chops are from pigs we raised, the apple butter is made in a 30 gallon copper kettle that was passed down to my wife(they get passed down from mother to daughter in our case daughter in law) my wife is the 6th generation with that kettle, the apples are from my pack hard next to the chicken coop where the eggs come from every morning.

That meal made me into the 6’3” 250lb man I am today lol

[rockrat]

Yesterday, took the wife out for breakfast. She had "Southwestern Biscuits and Gravy". Regular biscuits and gravy with a pork green chile added. Must have been real good as I didn't even get a bite of it. She did offer a bite, but by the time I was ready for it, it was all gone!! My fault. The places pork green chile is real good.