Note: If you’re a vegan or vegetarian what follows will be of little interest to you. If you’re a hard charging carnivore much like me, I suggest you give this recipe a whirl.
Most of us have all been there, you wake up in morning with your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, your breath smelling like an ashtray and your head throbbing like a freight train. It’s the mother of all hangovers and while there’s many a purported cure for the malaise you feel when you try and try and drag your sorry ass off the couch, floor or if you’re lucky enough, your own bed, you know that deep down inside food is what your body needs.
Well folks, I’m here to tell ya, sausage gravy with some homemade biscuits might just be the magic elixir you’re looking for to ease the pain.
Besides being rib sticking good it’s also easy to make.
I’m usually pretty lazy when it comes to baking homemade biscuits so I always try to have one of those Pillsbury preformed biscuits packages stashed away in my refrigerator. You know, those ones you just peel the label off and bash the container against the table or sink and presto, your bicuits are there. If I’m lucky, they’re the buttermilk kind. Just follow the cooking instructions on the label and you'll be fine.
As for the gravy…
Here’s what you need...
About one pound of ground pork sausage.
Three tablespoons of all-purpose flour
Three cups of milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Here’s what you do…
Get your hands on a large deep skillet and dump the ground sausage in there. Cover it up over a medium high heat cook it until it’s nice and brown. Remove the sausage and drain most of fat. Try and leave about two or three tablespoons in there in order to create your roux.
Add the flour to the frying pan and reduce the heat to medium low. If you happen to have a whisk handy (which I normally don’t, I do however, have a spoon) use it to stir the concoction until it begins to thicken into a paste. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for about five minutes, keep stirring every now and then to make sure it doesn’t clump up or stick to the bottom of the pan.With your whisk (or spoon) at the ready, pour in the milk at a steady pace. I know, I know, you’re probably starving and the temptation to dump all the milk in at once can be overwhelming but don’t do it. Your roux will turn to shit and your efforts will be just as wasted as you are. Bring it to a boil and add the cooked sausage back to the skillet. Lower the heat and let it simmer for about five more minutes.
Once the biscuits and gravy are done there’s really nothing left to do but cut the biscuits in half, slather them with a heaping helping of the gravy and dig right in.
Once your stomach is full it’s time to go back to bed and get yourself some much needed sleep.
If you’re really feeling like ass and don’t have the energy to cook most any diner worth its salt will have biscuits and gravy on the menu. As for me, I prefer not to leave the house and greet the world looking the way I do after a night of drunken revelry. It’s your call though.
On a side note, I’d like to mention that being from New York City I didn’t discover sausage gravy until I spent some time down South in the service of Uncle Sam where it’s almost like a religious experience and truth be told, those good old Southern boys sure knew what the hell they were doing when they came up with this.