I have had them at a pretty famous bbq place in Texas, they are tasteless and dry and the gravy is a sin that even the most watery Bisto outclassed spectacularly.
I love watching videos online of Brits trying food from the southern US because they always recoil at the sight of it before saying it’s one of the best things they’ve ever tasted.
We made some for the first time about a month ago and it was pretty good. I have some ideas for improving next time, but it was good enough to be worth making again.
I did feel very silly calling it biscuits and gravy though. The “biscuits” are more like dumplings or something, made from crumbly dough, not actually biscuits (aka cookies or crackers for Americans, I think). The “gravy” is also not gravy, it’s a thick sauce with vegetable lumps in. Ours was mostly tasteless but flavoured with thyme for a nice almost aftertaste. I was worried when I was cooking the sauce, but with a whole dinners-worth it was a really nice, subtle flavour. It lets the herbs and vegetables shine through.
I was looking up a recipe to jog my memory for the sauce, and apparently this is a breakfast food? Wtf is wrong with you, all of America? This was like a nice hearty dinner lol. What a bizarre way to start your day. Anyway, thanks for reading my review of biscuits and gravy that I don’t remember why I wrote any more 😂
It is a little heavy for breakfast for my tastes, yes. But it was originally used by people doing hard farm labor during the day who needed the calories and I do not at all fit that description so I respect the tradition even if I don’t follow it.
Vegetable chunks in the gravy seems a little unusual but I totally see it fitting the dish if you don’t want to make a separate vegetable side. But here’s my little recipe, passed down my family for god knows how long. They didn’t give me much, but they gave me this:
Take breakfast sausage in ground form. If you only have links and you want to replicate the original tradition, you can remove the casing to get at the sausage inside. Or just cut up the links if you don’t want to waste the casing. If you don’t have access to breakfast sausage or it’s too expensive, this is the approximate spice mix to use in conjunction with ground pork: sage, thyme, rosemary, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, red pepper flakes, coriander, garlic powder.
Cook breakfast sausage until you have toasty bits on the outside. Coat the sausage with flour, then cook for as long as you can without the flour burning. Then add milk, cook and stir until flour is incorporated with the milk into a sauce. Ratios are very forgiving, traditionally you’d use more milk and flour to get more mileage out of expensive meat.
Biscuits are also hella easy. Break cold butter (or whatever fat source you can afford, but not liquid oils) into chunks, mix into flour. Add buttermilk and baking soda, or milk and baking powder, then bake at 170 C until golden brown. Ratios are very forgiving as well.
Dafuq gravy did you have with vegetables? It’s a heavily peppered bechamel, starting from a sausage fat roux… and to spite the French a bit more we use black pepper.
Vegetarian? We did use black pepper in ours but not that much. I usually like quite spicy food whereas the other person I was cooking for does not, so it’s possible I didn’t put as much pepper in as most people would. It’s also possible that I just didn’t notice the pepper as much because I usually like eating chillies with my food.
Haha ikr. It can be very challenging to cook a meal that we both enjoy, sometimes. I still have a very vivid memory of having a friend cook for me when I was around 18 or so and they made an arrabiata or something similar, a slightly spicy pasta sauce. It amazed me how tasty food could be because my mum is really not a good cook (an excellent baker though :) )
You can get a fair bit of heat from fresh black pepper, piperine activates the same receptor as capsaicin. I can tolerate a lot more spice than most, but it’s definitely spicy. Or it kind of bridges “spiced” and “spicy”.
If you’re going for vegetarian that’s fine and dandy but I think a preponderance of the flavor comes from the sausage fat. I don’t think you can make a fair comparison from what you’ve described. The gravy is definitely not bland.
Also that’s what biscuits are here. They are heaven.
I’m British and have met two people like this in my life, one of which is American. Given the working class stereotype of ordering the “hottest thing on the menu” at an Indian restaurant, there’s some serious doublethink going on here.
If you want American biscuits for biscuits and gravy they should be fluffy and almost crumbly. You can just get the non-flaky stuff from pillsberry (theirs are vegan as a plus) in the states.
The gravy needs to have a “sausage” base, if you’re going vegetarian I suggest getting either impossible sausage (the tube not the patties) or field roasts Apple maple sausages (but then you gotta use a fuckload more pepper and more oil). Cool the sausage first, break it up, use its fat (usually also pour in some more oil if you don’t cook with a lot) make a roux (by adding flour to the fat. You can leave the sausage bits in, break up the links/patties if you didn’t use the tube stuff) add more pepper than you think should exist in food, then some oat milk. Let it cook until it re thickens enough to coat a spoon. Salt to taste. Serve on broken up biscuits.
If it’s bland, you need more pepper, or better “sausage” or more of it. If the carb in carb sauce does not leave you in a food coma it was also probably not right.
Honestly one of the saddest things about being vegan/vegetarian is not being able to order biscuits and gravy on menus when I see it. Still can make it when I want at least, but it’s painful when I’m like oooh biscuits…. Ah fuck.
My suggestion to anyone who thinks being vegetarian is impossible is to go to an Indian restaurant and order from the vegetarian menu, cuz god damn that shit is wonderful.
That feeling is interesting. I don’t miss meat. I don’t want sausage. I miss trying someone else’s variation of something I like. Rubens are what I miss most in that way but biscuits and gravy are up there.
In addition to the previous gravy comments, namely that you absolutely must use some crumbly sausage textured protein and the associated fat, I’ve got something else to mention.
Perfect crumbly biscuits are so good and also so tricky to make, that I feel like there’s a slim chance you nailed it the first time, so keep trying.
I struggle to nail it and I’ve been attempting on and off for decades. What makes it difficult is:
if you over-work them (stirring more than ~12 times) and the ingredients become homogenous, the texture is ruined.
They’re still edible but nothing like the real deal.
If the ingredients get warm then the butter will melt and once again ruin the texture.
If you cut the biscuits wrong (e.g. twisting) the sides will “smear” together and they won’t rise right, ruining the texture again.
A perfect (buttermilk/crumbly) biscuit should be fluffy, crumbly, golden brown on the outside, white on the inside and have 10-20 little yellow butter “pearls” dispersed throughout it, something like tiny blueberries in a blueberry muffin.
Even knowing all that, I still find myself failing often and chasing that 5-10% of times when they came out perfect. That said, I’m shit at baking bread for some reason, just cursed it seems. Other people (grandmas notably) can just fucking nail it every time.
The gravy should be pretty easy: start with a generous amount of fat, lightly brown a little flour to make a slurry, add milk little by little until it’s thick like a chowder, add black pepper and “sausage” crumbles. You can always add more milk, NEVER ADD MORE FAT
Break up a breakfast sausage in the white sauce along with plenty of pepper. That will liven up it’s taste. White sauce on its own is literally just a flour, butter, and milk, reduction. So yeah it’s pretty bland on it’s own. Some people also use Cayenne Pepper and/or cook bacon in the pan first to incorporate the grease into the sauce.
And yeah this food was meant to be eaten early by workers and get them to lunch. Especially explorers, sailors, and soldiers. People who burn a lot of calories.
What I mean is, in the UK we would call a biscuit either a crunchy sweet snack thing (aka cookie for America) or something to eat with cheese for lunch (aka cracker for America)
Yeah, I knew about that difference; I just completely misread your comment and thought you were trying to say that these weren’t biscuits by American standards. My bad.
Not scones, American biscuits. They’re different. Flaky, buttery, not sweet. And if there’s “not much right with it” then you had a crappy gravy without enough grease and pepper.
Probably! I was drawing a comparison for other readers, they’re closer to a shortcrust pastry in how they’re made. Savoury scones are a thing, by the way - usually made with a bit of cheese.
I don’t get the petulant attitude about basic word differences. Different food and linguistic traditions exist in different places. Absolutely bonkers, right?
Early British settlers in the United States brought with them a simple, easy style of cooking, most often based on ground wheat and warmed with gravy. Most were not wealthy men and women, and so it was a source of cheap nutrition.
A very similar practice was also popular once with the Royal Navy as hard, flour-based biscuits would keep for long journeys at sea but would also become so difficult to chew that they had to be softened up. These were first introduced in 1588 to the rations of ships and found their way into the New World by the 1700s at the latest.
The biscuit emerged as a distinct food type in the early 19th century, before the American Civil War. Cooks created a cheaply produced addition for their meals that required no yeast, which was expensive and difficult to store. With no leavening agents except the bitter-tasting pearlash available, beaten biscuits were laboriously beaten and folded to incorporate air into the dough which expanded when heated in the oven causing the biscuit to rise. In eating, the advantage of the biscuit over a slice of bread was that it was harder, and hence kept its shape when wiping up gravy in the popular combination biscuits and gravy.
American biscuits and gravy are direct descendants of British biscuits and gravy. And American biscuits are not scones
With how commonly American biscuits are compared to scones, im curious what British scones are like, because the scones I’m familiar with have a very different texture from American biscuits.
They’re often flakey like biscuits, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. I also think of scones more as desserts than used for something savory.
Brits who complain about (American) biscuits and gravy have clearly never had (American) biscuits and gravy
I have had them at a pretty famous bbq place in Texas, they are tasteless and dry and the gravy is a sin that even the most watery Bisto outclassed spectacularly.
Usually, you’ll find they’ll start making fun of you before you can even explain what it is
I love watching videos online of Brits trying food from the southern US because they always recoil at the sight of it before saying it’s one of the best things they’ve ever tasted.
“It looks like a chopped up ferret.”
Those guys are notorious for pandering to their American audience to be fair.
I think I saw the exact video you’re referencing here 😂
We made some for the first time about a month ago and it was pretty good. I have some ideas for improving next time, but it was good enough to be worth making again.
I did feel very silly calling it biscuits and gravy though. The “biscuits” are more like dumplings or something, made from crumbly dough, not actually biscuits (aka cookies or crackers for Americans, I think). The “gravy” is also not gravy, it’s a thick sauce with vegetable lumps in. Ours was mostly tasteless but flavoured with thyme for a nice almost aftertaste. I was worried when I was cooking the sauce, but with a whole dinners-worth it was a really nice, subtle flavour. It lets the herbs and vegetables shine through.
I was looking up a recipe to jog my memory for the sauce, and apparently this is a breakfast food? Wtf is wrong with you, all of America? This was like a nice hearty dinner lol. What a bizarre way to start your day. Anyway, thanks for reading my review of biscuits and gravy that I don’t remember why I wrote any more 😂
It is a little heavy for breakfast for my tastes, yes. But it was originally used by people doing hard farm labor during the day who needed the calories and I do not at all fit that description so I respect the tradition even if I don’t follow it.
Vegetable chunks in the gravy seems a little unusual but I totally see it fitting the dish if you don’t want to make a separate vegetable side. But here’s my little recipe, passed down my family for god knows how long. They didn’t give me much, but they gave me this:
Biscuits are also hella easy. Break cold butter (or whatever fat source you can afford, but not liquid oils) into chunks, mix into flour. Add buttermilk and baking soda, or milk and baking powder, then bake at 170 C until golden brown. Ratios are very forgiving as well.
Dafuq gravy did you have with vegetables? It’s a heavily peppered bechamel, starting from a sausage fat roux… and to spite the French a bit more we use black pepper.
Vegetarian? We did use black pepper in ours but not that much. I usually like quite spicy food whereas the other person I was cooking for does not, so it’s possible I didn’t put as much pepper in as most people would. It’s also possible that I just didn’t notice the pepper as much because I usually like eating chillies with my food.
Leave it to Brits to call pepper “spicy.”
Haha ikr. It can be very challenging to cook a meal that we both enjoy, sometimes. I still have a very vivid memory of having a friend cook for me when I was around 18 or so and they made an arrabiata or something similar, a slightly spicy pasta sauce. It amazed me how tasty food could be because my mum is really not a good cook (an excellent baker though :) )
You can get a fair bit of heat from fresh black pepper, piperine activates the same receptor as capsaicin. I can tolerate a lot more spice than most, but it’s definitely spicy. Or it kind of bridges “spiced” and “spicy”.
If you’re going for vegetarian that’s fine and dandy but I think a preponderance of the flavor comes from the sausage fat. I don’t think you can make a fair comparison from what you’ve described. The gravy is definitely not bland.
Also that’s what biscuits are here. They are heaven.
Ah, that would explain it. Maybe next time I’ll see if there’s a way to replicate that sausage fat flavour because that does sound good
I’m confused about how casually you’re conflating piperine and capsaicin.
Brits think that ketchup is spicy.
I’m British and have met two people like this in my life, one of which is American. Given the working class stereotype of ordering the “hottest thing on the menu” at an Indian restaurant, there’s some serious doublethink going on here.
Okay… so… dear god please try again? lol.
If you want American biscuits for biscuits and gravy they should be fluffy and almost crumbly. You can just get the non-flaky stuff from pillsberry (theirs are vegan as a plus) in the states.
The gravy needs to have a “sausage” base, if you’re going vegetarian I suggest getting either impossible sausage (the tube not the patties) or field roasts Apple maple sausages (but then you gotta use a fuckload more pepper and more oil). Cool the sausage first, break it up, use its fat (usually also pour in some more oil if you don’t cook with a lot) make a roux (by adding flour to the fat. You can leave the sausage bits in, break up the links/patties if you didn’t use the tube stuff) add more pepper than you think should exist in food, then some oat milk. Let it cook until it re thickens enough to coat a spoon. Salt to taste. Serve on broken up biscuits.
If it’s bland, you need more pepper, or better “sausage” or more of it. If the carb in carb sauce does not leave you in a food coma it was also probably not right.
You are going to make a vegetarian out of me, against my will.
Honestly one of the saddest things about being vegan/vegetarian is not being able to order biscuits and gravy on menus when I see it. Still can make it when I want at least, but it’s painful when I’m like oooh biscuits…. Ah fuck.
My suggestion to anyone who thinks being vegetarian is impossible is to go to an Indian restaurant and order from the vegetarian menu, cuz god damn that shit is wonderful.
That feeling is interesting. I don’t miss meat. I don’t want sausage. I miss trying someone else’s variation of something I like. Rubens are what I miss most in that way but biscuits and gravy are up there.
I love a good vegetable curry from the local Indian joint!
There are no vegetables in biscuits and gravy.
Onions are a vegetable
Onions are not an ingredient in biscuits and gravy.
I’ve had it with onions various times.
Source: am from the deep south
Vegetable lumps?
Not sure what y’all were having, but it weren’t gravy.
If it’s not a thick white gravy with chunks of sausage in it, it’s not biscuits and gravy.
Haha so I’m learning
In addition to the previous gravy comments, namely that you absolutely must use some crumbly sausage textured protein and the associated fat, I’ve got something else to mention.
Perfect crumbly biscuits are so good and also so tricky to make, that I feel like there’s a slim chance you nailed it the first time, so keep trying.
I struggle to nail it and I’ve been attempting on and off for decades. What makes it difficult is:
if you over-work them (stirring more than ~12 times) and the ingredients become homogenous, the texture is ruined.
They’re still edible but nothing like the real deal.
If the ingredients get warm then the butter will melt and once again ruin the texture.
If you cut the biscuits wrong (e.g. twisting) the sides will “smear” together and they won’t rise right, ruining the texture again.
A perfect (buttermilk/crumbly) biscuit should be fluffy, crumbly, golden brown on the outside, white on the inside and have 10-20 little yellow butter “pearls” dispersed throughout it, something like tiny blueberries in a blueberry muffin.
Even knowing all that, I still find myself failing often and chasing that 5-10% of times when they came out perfect. That said, I’m shit at baking bread for some reason, just cursed it seems. Other people (grandmas notably) can just fucking nail it every time.
The gravy should be pretty easy: start with a generous amount of fat, lightly brown a little flour to make a slurry, add milk little by little until it’s thick like a chowder, add black pepper and “sausage” crumbles. You can always add more milk, NEVER ADD MORE FAT
Break up a breakfast sausage in the white sauce along with plenty of pepper. That will liven up it’s taste. White sauce on its own is literally just a flour, butter, and milk, reduction. So yeah it’s pretty bland on it’s own. Some people also use Cayenne Pepper and/or cook bacon in the pan first to incorporate the grease into the sauce.
And yeah this food was meant to be eaten early by workers and get them to lunch. Especially explorers, sailors, and soldiers. People who burn a lot of calories.
You’re incorrect; this is how we use the word “biscuit”.
Edit: I fucked up; please see below.
What I mean is, in the UK we would call a biscuit either a crunchy sweet snack thing (aka cookie for America) or something to eat with cheese for lunch (aka cracker for America)
Yeah, I knew about that difference; I just completely misread your comment and thought you were trying to say that these weren’t biscuits by American standards. My bad.
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It’s scones covered in a white sauce built on sausage meat roux. Nothing wrong with it, but not much right with it either, it’s just calories.
Not scones, American biscuits. They’re different. Flaky, buttery, not sweet. And if there’s “not much right with it” then you had a crappy gravy without enough grease and pepper.
Probably! I was drawing a comparison for other readers, they’re closer to a shortcrust pastry in how they’re made. Savoury scones are a thing, by the way - usually made with a bit of cheese.
Lmao you can tell someone is American when they say “if it didn’t taste good you just need more grease”
It’s really about the sausage, which releases fat (grease). You don’t add grease directly.
Fat is flavor.
it’s pretty good if you can get over the fact it’s not biscuits or gravy.
They ain’t putting brown sauce on shortbread. more like white sauce on savoury scones.
Sir please don’t ever bring your hate speech to Atlanta if you value your safety
I don’t get the petulant attitude about basic word differences. Different food and linguistic traditions exist in different places. Absolutely bonkers, right?
American biscuits and gravy are direct descendants of British biscuits and gravy. And American biscuits are not scones
With how commonly American biscuits are compared to scones, im curious what British scones are like, because the scones I’m familiar with have a very different texture from American biscuits.
They’re often flakey like biscuits, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. I also think of scones more as desserts than used for something savory.
Or it is biscuits and gravy, and the people who think that phrase means brown sauce on cookies are wrong.
Are you even allowed to type ain’t? Won’t they come take your internet license?