Biscuits & Gravy

When I am feeling nice and lazy and don't want to make anything for dinner I whip up some biscuits. Sometimes we have them with gravy and sometimes we just eat half a pan of them with jam and call it good. It takes no time at all to make these biscuits and they are quite delectable if I do say so myself.

They're so easy that a 9 year old could make them and win Sweepstakes at the Cache County Fair in open class. That is a true story. It happened to me. I have been making these biscuits for a lot of years! This recipe seems long but I have added in a lot of tips and tricks that I have picked up over the years.

Baking Powder Ranch Biscuits

(Ranch, as in a cattle ranch. Not Hidden Valley)
4 cups flour
2 sticks butter- you have to use real butter, not margarine or spread. Just use butter!
8 tsp. baking powder
1 scant tablespoon sugar
dash of salt- seriously, just a dash especially if you use salted butter
1 1/3 cup milk
Oven temp 400*

Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Toss in the sticks of butter and cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter. It looks like this:

You can get one here

You could also use a couple forks to do this but a pastry cutter really does the best job. You will know you are done cutting in the flour when your arm hurts and the mixture looks like very coarse corn meal with some chunks of butter that are small pea sized.

Slowly add in the milk and mix/toss it with a fork. Mix everything until it just barely starts to come together. If you over mix at this point your biscuits will get tough. We want light and fluffy so don't get too crazy mixing. It should look like this:

 

 Turn the mixture out on a floured counter top or a pastry cloth. I prefer a pastry cloth because I can sort of wrap the dough up and squeeze it together to get all the crumbly bits incorporated rather than having to mix it more. Have I mentioned that you shouldn't over mix?

Pat the dough out with your hands until it's about 1/2-3/4 inch thick. Cut with a glass or a clean tin can, just something with straight sides.

Now comes the key part. I don't know why I do this but I feel like it makes the biscuits better. You have to shake the biscuits. Shake is not the right word but that is what my little nephew B calls it when I make these biscuits with him- you can see he and his brother shaking them in the pictures below. Hold your hands like you are about to clap them together with the biscuit sitting on the counter between them. Then just roll the biscuit between your hands like you are trying to open a jar lid with freshly painted nails. Does that make sense? Just shake each biscuit around once or twice.

Pop them on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 400*.

Gravy

While the biscuits are cooking I usually whip up some gravy. It's more of a method than anything else. I don't think I ever use a recipe but I will try to explain it.

Brown 1 pound of ground sausage- I like Italian or hot but really any kind will do. Once it's all brown sprinkle in some flour right on top of the meat. I think something like 1/8-1/4 cup? Mix that around until the flour soaks up the grease in the pan and sort of cooks onto the meat, it just takes a minute or so. Then just pour in some milk until it looks right. It will thicken the longer it cooks so keep your milk out and just add it and stir until it is as thick or thin as you like. I add a lot of black pepper to my gravy as well.

Once the biscuits are out of the oven, pull them apart and pour that delicious gravy all over the halves. I like to pair this entree with some home-canned green beans and home-canned peaches. We always had home-canned growing up but now store bought is how we roll.

You can also eat these with honey butter, berries and whipped cream or just some homemade raspberry jam.