Biscuits and Gravy

A staple of any good, Southern childhood. An absolute tragedy to photograph.

The ingredients:

The biscuits:

• 2 cups all purpose-flour (ideally White Lily, or another flour with a lower protein content)

• 5 tsp baking powder

• 1/4 tsp baking soda

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 6 tbsp butter, frozen

• 3/4 cup buttermilk

The gravy:

• 8 ounces sausage (I prefer hot Tennessee Pride or hot Jimmy Dean)

• 2 heaping tbsp flour

• 1 cup whole milk (or buttermilk)

• 2 tsp garlic salt

• 1 tbsp black pepper

The recipe:

Pre-heat oven to 425. For the biscuits, combine all dry ingredients in food processor (while a food processor is ideal, biscuits can also be prepared in a standard bowl). Add frozen butter, cut into small slabs. The food processor will help cut these up into the tiniest bits. If hand-mixing, work the butter until it forms pea-sized or smaller granules in the flour. Add milk and work until just incorporated. Cut to desired size and refrigerate until oven is ready. Brush tops with buttermilk. Bake in oven for about 12-14 minutes.

For the gravy, brown sausage and remove. Drain grease except for a couple tablespoons. Add flour and stir until grease, sausage bits, and flour have combined to make a paste. Add milk in, a little at a time, and stir vigorously. Pause to let it thicken, then continue stirring. Add garlic salt and black pepper (I tend to add more because I love a black pepper gravy). Once you’ve reached desired thickness, add sausage back in to your own preference. Serve over biscuits.

The story:

I love biscuits and gravy, especially when it’s homemade. But I swear, you cannot beat biscuits and gravy from a gas station. I know that sounds weird to a lot of people, but that’s my culture, ok? My love of it dates back to kindergarten. I never wanted to go to school because my two best friends (my mom and my mamaw) stayed home, and frankly, that’s the only place I wanted to be. When kindergarten started, I was devastated to have to leave them behind, but I quickly learned that there were benefits to the end of the day. After dropping my brother and I off at school, my mom would pick my mamaw up a biscuit and gravy from this place called Pioneer Market off of Chapman Highway. They’d serve two big biscuits, split, in a white styrofoam container. They’d heap the gravy on top of the biscuits, and I swear, there was no better meal. The only way, in my estimation, it could be improved was to serve it cold.

How could I have known that? Well, school let out at 2:45pm, and the real ones know that Guiding Light—the long-running soap opera on CBS—started at 3:00pm. My mamaw loved Guiding Light, and I loved my mamaw, so I, too, fell in love with the antics of Reva Shayne Spaulding and friends. The problem was that I asked too many questions, so Mamaw started saving half of her biscuit and gravy for me to eat after school. If I had my mouth full of biscuit, it meant she didn’t have her ear full of questions. I got gravy. She got her stories. A love affair began.

New York famously does not have good biscuit and gravy. Here, they fuck it up with ingredients like rosemary and chorizo and too much sugar. What I’m serving you here is straight up white, sausage gravy. It’s unpretentious. It’s terrible to photograph, and by god, it’s the closest thing I can recreate to what Pioneer Market used to serve. Mamaw is gone now, and so is Pioneer Market, but every time I have a bite of biscuit and gravy, it’s like I can hear Mamaw gasping as Reva pummeled toward San Cristobal in the plane that Annie Dutton hijacked so that she could go back to Springfield and live the rest of her days with Josh.

It’s a long story. Maybe just stick with the recipe.