It’s the little details that change “good” to “great”, especially in preparing and serving food. I have some Biscuit and Gravy tips for you to try on the trail or in the kitchen.
I am off work today so I thought I would recreate a great BWCA camp breakfast in the comfort of our own kitchen. Pay attention to a few details for a great meal. Here goes!
1) Seasonings and Sausage selection: Try a “HOT” flavored tube sausage. The seasonings have had time to work through the sausage. Temper the flavor with a regular sausage if you must. Use a chipotle seasoning and some crushed garlic for extra flavor and kick if needed. The sausage will come with Red Pepper for taste and heat.
For those needing an exact step by step recipe, I am not very helpful. Just follow a recipe and shake some extra seasonings in after tasting. Black pepper is a must! Remember, these are tips to add to your recipe.
2) Soak up and caramelize the extra oils. The grease fried off the sausage has all the flavor. Sometimes I add a couple glugs of olive oil when browning the sausage. To merge in the oil and grease, put in enough flour to soak up the grease and keep browning. The gummy mixture will caramelize a bit and turn brown (do not burn) for better taste as well as texture. Immediately add your gravy base and milk (or water depending on your base) and stir.. Burnt gravy is unfit for bear or coon raiding camp!
I have a couple of possible suggestions for making your gravy base. Both work well if you want more then a white peppered paste. Please want more!
Use an “Our Family” cream of mushroom base
Use a “Southeastern mills” prepackaged base
Mix and stir until you get the right consistency. I use milk for thinning out and a flour and water paste for thickening or just adding bulk to the gravy.
3) Time to make biscuits. Choose wisely. Actually how you make the biscuit is more important than any single recipe. I have used a complete pancake mix and water on a wilderness camp site with tinfoil (makeshift reflector oven) as my greased pan in front of the fire. It works and tastes good.
A couple of biscuit tips: A) Use flour to give it “break-apart” layers. Make the biscuit dough and set the lump of well mixed dough on a flat surface dusted with flour. sprinkle flour on top and flatten to 3/4 to 1″ thick. Fold over, squish down again with another sprinkle of flour. fold over again and flatten to 1″ (this is an important tip). Cut out biscuits with a cutter or a glass to the dimension you desire.
B) Thickness is important. I like 1″ biscuit dough because after baking they come apart 4 ways because of the flour sprinkled between the layers. When they are baked, only the outside is crispy and brown with a large area of flaky white biscuit. Thin biscuits tend to become little frisbees very quickly if not watched in the oven.
4) Bake the biscuits and taste test, with the gravy, the poorest looking biscuit. Add ghost pepper if they are still not spicy enough (You will need a towel to wipe the sweat off your forehead if you add ghost pepper).
5) Finally: Make more then you can share so there is some left for you. The gravy and biscuits pictured will not make it very far and the guys usually polish off the biscuits first with gravy or butter and jelly. Somehow I know I will see gravy piled up on the plates hash browns and eggs as well as the biscuits (that’s just not right!). I made a pot of gravy and three pans of biscuits for our church men’s breakfast tomorrow morning. Fun times!
Yep…not working today, Just puttering and experimenting in the kitchen. An unusual post for me. hope you try it sometime. Let me know your tweaks!
Gary
PS…I might let you know how the steaks turned out another time…
