Galley PiratesBiscuits and Sausage Gravy

Quickest but most satisfying and hearty breakfast ever, particularly if you go with bake-and-serve biscuits. I’ll post a good homemade biscuit recipe later (my mother’s Angel Biscuits), but wanting to get off the dock and into the wind quickly this morning, short-order food that sticks to the ribs was the plan. Where I come from, real gravy is like real coffee…you should need a fork to stir it, and that fork should stand up in it.

First, get up early, make a pot of French press coffee with chickory, pour yourself a cup and take the swab to the beach.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

5 bake-and-serve biscuits
1 pound ground sausage
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil or bacon grease
3 tablespoons flour
1-1/2 cups milk
Salt and pepper

We like Cajun sausage for some spice. You can also use link sausages if that’s all you can find — you just have to squeeze the meat out of the casings and wonder why you paid someone to put it in there in the first place. I do wonder if links would store longer in the icebox than loose meat…anyone out there know? Maybe I’ll test this someday.

Bake-n-serve biscuits come in that exploding cardboard can, in the refrigerated section of the grocery, frequently by the yogurts and cheeses. They can be jostled around the icebox indefinitely and bake up at an easy 350 degrees in 15 minutes. Not nearly as good as home made, but infinitely easier and not bad — with gravy all over them, you will never miss the hours of kneeding and rising and rolling and cutting! I somehow grabbed the “even includes butter!” version, unintentionally — hence the little yellow flakes. Not bad, just not butter.

Cook the sausage over medium-high heat, breaking it up as much as possible, until almost all of the pink is gone.

Remove the sausage to a plate and gauge how much drippings you have. Add oil to equal about three tablespoons total.

Heat the oil until it shimmers and then sprinkle the flour across it. Stir this over medium heat for a few minutes, until the flour starts to brown.

Actually, by the time you get most of the flour lumps pressed out it should be getting about right.

Add the milk, stirring constantly. The flour mixture will begin to clump up again. Add more milk and stir until you have a relatively smooth gravy of whatever consistency you prefer. As you can see from our serving photos, we don’t mind a thick gravy that sits right up on top of the biscuits!

Add the sausage back and stir well. Salt and pepper to taste.

When the biscuits are done and nicely browned, pop them open with a fork like an English muffin, and add a pat of butter. Yes, you heard me…add a pat of butter to your butter-infused biscuits before putting your sausage gravy on top. You’re going to be tacking in 18-20 knots of wind today. You will work it off.