Breakfast Recipes — The Biscuits and Gravy That Got Me Through the Week

Went to the job site Monday for what I knew might be the last time, though I didn't say that to anyone because saying it makes it real and I wasn't ready for real yet. The builder — his name is Mike Satterly, I should've said that weeks ago, he's a decent man who built his company from a pickup truck and a handshake — met me at the trailer and we sat down and he said, Craig, I need to know where we stand. I told him about the MRI and the disability filing and he nodded like he'd been expecting it since October, which he had. He said you've been the best foreman I've ever had. I said I appreciate that. He said take whatever time you need to sort the paperwork and I'll hold your spot as long as I can. We both knew he couldn't hold it long. We shook hands. I drove off the site and pulled over on Nicholasville Road and sat for five minutes with the engine running.

The rest of the week I was home. Connie went to work. I filled out disability forms at the kitchen table, which is a special kind of humiliation — reducing thirty-three years of labor to check boxes and dates of injury and descriptions of limitation. Can you lift twenty pounds. Can you stand for one hour. Can you bend at the waist. No. Sometimes. Not without consequence. I wrote it all down in my slow handwriting and hated every word.

Made biscuits and gravy Friday morning because I needed to do something with my hands that wasn't paperwork. Betty's biscuits — White Lily flour, buttermilk, lard, cut with a biscuit cutter not a glass because a glass seals the edges and the biscuits won't rise right. Sausage gravy from a pound of Jimmy Dean cooked in the skillet, flour stirred in, milk added slow, pepper heavy, salt light. The gravy thickens while you stir and the biscuits brown while you wait and for twenty minutes the kitchen smells like a Saturday morning in Evarts when I was ten years old and the only thing I had to worry about was whether Dale would let me have the last biscuit. He never did. Oldest brothers don't yield biscuits.

Amber called Sunday. She's been picking up extra shifts at UK Hospital — still no end to it, the hospitals are tired, the nurses are tired, Amber is tired but won't say so. She asked about my back. I said I'm handling it. She said Dad, handling it and fixing it are different things. She's a nurse. She knows. I said I know too, baby. I'm working on it. And I am. Slowly. The way a man works on admitting that the thing he was is not the thing he's going to be.

I’ve written down recipes before, but never because someone asked me to — always because I needed to give something a permanent place in the world before I forgot it. This is the one I made Friday morning when the forms were still spread across the table and I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore. Betty’s biscuits and my sausage gravy, the way we’ve done it in this family for thirty years, the way my mother did it in Harlan County when Saturday morning meant something worth getting out of bed for. If you need something to do with your hands that isn’t grief or paperwork, start here.

Breakfast Recipes: Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• For the Biscuits:
• 2 cups White Lily self-rising flour, plus more for dusting
• 1/4 cup lard (or cold shortening), cut into small pieces
• 3/4 cup cold whole buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted, for brushing
• For the Sausage Gravy:
• 1 lb Jimmy Dean pork breakfast sausage (regular)
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 cups whole milk, warmed
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste (heavy)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste (light)
• Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven. Heat oven to 450°F. Lightly flour a baking sheet or line with parchment.
2. Cut in the fat. Place flour in a large bowl. Add lard and work it in quickly with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with a few pea-sized pieces remaining. Don’t overwork it — cold hands and fast fingers.
3. Add buttermilk. Pour in the buttermilk and stir gently with a fork just until the dough comes together. It will be shaggy. That’s right.
4. Turn and pat. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Pat — do not roll — to about 3/4-inch thickness. Fold once, pat again. Cut with a biscuit cutter straight down, no twisting. A glass seals the edges and the biscuits won’t rise right. Press straight down and lift.
5. Bake. Place biscuits touching on the prepared sheet. Bake 12–14 minutes until golden on top. Brush with melted butter the moment they come out.
6. Brown the sausage. While biscuits bake, cook sausage in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it up as it cooks. Don’t drain the fat — you need it for the gravy.
7. Make the roux. Reduce heat to medium. Sprinkle flour over the cooked sausage and stir to coat. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1–2 minutes until the raw flour smell is gone.
8. Add milk slow. Pour in the warm milk gradually, a little at a time, stirring after each addition. Keep stirring as the gravy thickens, 4–6 minutes. It will look loose at first. Stay with it.
9. Season and finish. Add black pepper generously — more than you think. Add salt lightly. Taste and adjust. The gravy should coat the back of a spoon and hold a trail when you drag a finger through it.
10. Serve. Split hot biscuits, ladle gravy over. Eat at the kitchen table. Not the desk with the paperwork.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 28g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 820mg