Recipe: Homemade Biscuits & Meishan Sausage Gravy

Almost every Sunday, we celebrate the week with a lazy family brunch. After morning chores, our kiddos help me (Carla) make homemade biscuits (cue flour all over our kitchen — its 100% worth it), while Ben whips up a spicy, delicious sausage gravy using our Meishan breakfast sausage. It’s hearty, it’s fun, it’s comforting. We hope you can take some slow, quiet time at home this week to celebrate the simple joys in life too.

This recipe changes often, depending on what we have one hand. We often use spelt flour instead of wheat, lard instead of butter. Each brings its own unique flavor and an opportunity to play with flavors. It’s a forgiving recipe that is very easy to be creative with!

Ingredients:

Biscuits (Makes approx. 12 large biscuits):

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups wheat flour

2 scant tbsp baking powder

2 tbsp sugar

2 teaspoons salt

10 tbsp butter, or lard — we have used both, depending on what’s available in our fridge

1 1/2 cups whole milk

Meishan Sausage Gravy:

1 lb JCF breakfast sausage

1 heaping ½ cup of white flour

4 ½ cups of whole milk

1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon black pepper

Dash of salt as needed

Directions:

Biscuits:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, sugar and salt.

Using a cheese grater, grate butter into flour mixture. (You can also add the butter and use a pastry cutter, if you have one). If using the cheese grater, cut the butter into the flour mixture with a fork, ensuring that butter is well mixed into the flour mixture.

Slowly (seriously — very slowly!) add milk, making sure to mix well in between. The dough should be well-mixed and sticky at this point.

Flour your hands and a cutting board, and lift the dough out. Knead the dough around 10 times until it is firm and stretchy. Roll into a ball, then flatten dough out to 3/4 to 1 inch thickness.

Use a small cup to cut out your biscuits; combine any dough scraps left into a ball and re-flatten out to cut additional biscuits.

We like to cook our biscuits in 8 inch round glass pie pans. Grease your intended pan and tuck biscuits in tightly. Cook at 425 degrees for approximately 16 minutes.

Making a large batch like this ensures there are leftover biscuits for our family, which we snack on through the rest of the week. We especially love a biscuit smeared with local honey as a great afternoon pick-me-up!

Meishan Sausage Gravy:

In a large frying pan, cook sausage on medium high heat until brown (I like to cook mine until it starts to get firm and crispy)

Next, add black pepper, red pepper, and salt. Stir into the sausage and let cook for a few minutes.

Once the sausage is browned, add in the flour and stir until it coats the entire pan and the grease is absorbed by the flour.

After a few minutes of stirring, slowly pour the milk in to the pan, about a half cup at a time. Keep stirring throughout.

Once the gravy is thick and bubbling, its ready to serve over your homemade biscuits! Enjoy!