IME, British sausages tend to have more non-meat filler and a completely different spice mix. You really can’t make a decent biscuits and gravy out of British ingredients. But if you shop around, I’m sure there are stores who import the right makings (Farmer John and Jimmy Dean are perfect bulk sausage for this dish). Mix your biscuits by hand, scrape up all of the BCBs from the pan when making the cream gravy, and pepper the snot out of the dish before eating.
Did they make you prove that one of your relatives was a customer before they’d let you eat there?
IME, mainly in Texas and Tennessee, the sausage is very much more meaty, as silenius says. And much more heavily spiced. Also, it’s bits of crumbled sausage meat, rather than sausages with skins on. I think the McMuffin patty is the closest to American sausage meat ETA: that we get in the mainstream in the UK.
When I was in Hong Kong I went to “USA & Co.” and got some American sausage and Pillsbury biscuits, and did a very passable version. (All you have to do is fry the sausage, then make a bechamel over it using the sausage fat.) It really is divine.
(I’m assuming you know how to make gravy, so I won’t post a recipe.) American breakfast sausage tends to be heavy on the sage and fat. Gotta have fat for the gravy! Sausage gravy is traditional, but you can also make bacon gravy. There’s a place where I used to live that has sausage-bacon-and-ham gravy that is the best I’ve had. (The ham is a chopped-up smoked ham steak.) Try making bacon gravy to see if that’s successful. Use fatty bacon.
I’m curious as to how Americans might perceive Rich Tea biscuits - assuming you don’t have them over there, they are a thin, dryish, flat, not-very-sweet biscuit(UK definition) made from white flour.
Probably the way I perceive them: “fucking disgusting”.
True, but Canada is often the overlap between the UK and the US. We still have some vestiges of the motherland as well as usually what is typical across the border.
For example, go into a supermarket here, and you won’t only see pop, but you can also find cordial with no problem. Jello pudding is there, and so is Bird’s Custard.
As to biscuits, the American-style biscuit is quite easy to find, and many Canadians also make them, although it is seldom that one sees “biscuits and gravy” anywhere except maybe for some American chain restaurants; I’m thinking that in the past, Denny’s has had them. Someone alluded to bread and gravy as being English, and I have also had this after the meal is over and there’s leftover gravy; chances of this happening depend on how good the gravy is, though (has to be from scratch and not a mix).
Of course, the natural Canadian overlap regarding gravy is fries and gravy, something that most Canadian teenagers used to know in the the days before the proliferation of McDonald’s and that ilk.
I think probably the UK intepretation of ‘gravy’ is different too, but you’re talking about a generally pale-coloured bechamel-based sauce made from the sausage fat, flour and milk or water, aren’t you?
Certainly that rings true with my woefully sparse experience gleaned from McD’s sausage patties - I definitely notice the sage - I think the meat tends to be a bit more finely ground than the higher-meat UK sausages too.
- Sausages in the UK come in two very broad categories - the really cheap ones that are ground to paté-like texture (probably to conceal the nature of their ingredients and their non-meat content), and premium sausages that are often quite coarsely ground, higher meat content and often have special flavouring ingredients such as fruit, unusual spices etc).
I think I might have to start from scratch to get something approximating American sausage.
Bacon could be dodgy too, as we have different ideas about that too in the UK. Thanks for the recipe links - I’m going to have a play with all of this over the weekend.
You can easily make your own breakfast sausage. Really, it’s dead simple. All it is, basically, is ground pork shoulder (or other appropriate sausage cut), sage, red pepper flakes (if you like them), salt, and pepper. You don’t even have to stuff them in casings. Make them into patties (as many people do anyway) or form little finger links with them.
So, as I noted, the key flavor for breakfast sausage is sage. Hot pepper (red chile) flakes would be the next most important addition (other than the salt and pepper).
If you need exact proportions, you can look up “breakfast sausage” on Google and get a zillion hits. Other ingredients that are nice to add are nutmeg (use very sparingly, a little goes a long way) and/or allspice and/or powdered ginger.
Yes. Drippings + flour + milk + salt and pepper, plus the meat(s).
I’ve never scratch-made sausage, but here is Alton Brown’s breakfast sausage recipe. As for bacon, you might try what we call Irish bacon here, as it tends to have a decent amount of fat. Basically you’re looking for a fatty smoked bacon.
Re. Gravy recipe: The only time I’ve made gravy with milk is when making Chicken-Fried Steak. I can understand that sausage gravy also uses it, and, in fact, when Dairy Queen first came out with their chicken strip basket here in Canada, it also had a milk-based gravy.
Naturally, the problem with this type of gravy is that it’s fattening.
From what I’ve seen of British gravy, it usually consists of water mixed with such things as Bovril (which is basically liquid bouillon) and flour, or Bisto (which is a powdered bouillon/gravy mix), and it may or may not have actual meat drippings in it.
Naturally, the problem with this type of gravy is that it’s not really gravy (unless it has actual meat drippings in it).
The way I was taught to make gravy is to have drippings in the roaster, mix flour with this and stir, then raise the heat and add water to it until it’s a thick consistency. Salt and pepper to taste. If it’s too stiff add water, if it’s too watery, add flour. Use a whisk, because there’s nothing worse than lumps of flour in your gravy.
A proper American biscuit is not made with baking soda though; that’s a buttermilk biscuit. Proper biscuits are raised with yeast, usually overnight in the fridge to keep the bubbles small. (and for convenience since they’re a breakfast food.) They are then rolled out and folded and rolled until they have many flaky layers of buttery (actually more often vegetable shortening-y) goodness.
A biscuit is 3 parts flour, 2 parts cream and 1 part fat. (yes, many people would use milk, and yes, the cream results in a cheat increasing the fat ratio.) In my family we substitute about 1/8 cup of the flour in any recipe for cornstarch, which greatly increases the fineness of the texture, and keeps the fat flavor at the fore, without it’s developing a greasy mouth-feel. We have a yeast line which lives on potato starch, and that’s what we use in biscuits. I’d never use a sugar-fed yeast in biscuits.
Scones IME are much denser, much larger, and have a rougher texture.
I made buttermilk biscuits last night from “Bisquick” mix, to serve under strawberries and cream. I could hear my Grandmother rolling around in her grave all night. . .
ETA: I’m not a sausage eater, but it pains me to think of you judging American sausage by that fatty, disgusting stuff McDonald’s serves. Think brats or polish sausage.
What about beer instead of yeast?
Really? When I think of a generic biscuit, it’s a type of quick bread, not yeast-leavened. All the first few hits I found on google for traditional biscuit or southern biscuit recipe call for either self-rising flour or baking powder (usually with baking soda in the case of buttermilk biscuits.) I’m not saying yeast biscuits don’t exist, but in my experience, the “standard” biscuit in America is a quick bread.
Ok, I confess graham crackers and animal crackers do exist, but as you say, they’re anomalous. No US person that I know of would assume anything sweet if you mentioned “crackers” in general. Most would assume something that you’d put cheese or similar on, and would expect savory/salty.
No, I’d consider them to be oddly named cookies.
Here’s the Homesick Texan’s recipe for breakfast sausage. To be served alongside biscuits–which are not made with yeast. Cream gravy optional.
Then the Homesick Texan discovered chocolate gravy. Which was new to many of us–but sounds like a really good idea…
I’m with Maserschmidt on this – most biscuits I’ve encountered are “quickbread” types, using baking powder. and especially because Bisquick does.
“Buttermilk” biscuits means to me biscuits made with buttermilk. Using it in any other way seems perverse.
I’ve made buttermilk biscuits before and they never involved yeast. I’ve only ever made baking soda/powder kinds.
To clear up a few points:
All crackers in America are thin and crispy. If no modifier is specified, it’s understood that one means something salty but not sweet, such as a saltine (what Brits would call water biscuits, I believe). They can be either square or round, or occasionally other shapes, and are often eaten with cheese.
Graham crackers are sweetened with brown sugar and sometimes honey, and are very similar to British digestive biscuits. They’re always rectangular, and perforated to be broken into two squares or four rectangles.
Gravy in the US can either be brown gravy or white gravy, depending on context. Brown gravy is just broth (from any source) thickened with starch. White gravy usually uses flour instead of starch, has milk or cream in it, and usually has copious black pepper. Brown gravy is more common in the North, and white gravy is more common in the South. Biscuits and gravy, being a Southern dish (in origin, at least, though you can get it at a greasy spoon diner anywhere in the country) is always made with white gravy. White gravy is also traditional with country-fried steak, which is a low-quality cut of beef, tenderized and breaded, and topped with gravy. Either kind of gravy can be served on mashed potatoes, though if anything else in the dinner has gravy on it, the gravy on the potatoes usually matches it.
Dumplings are usually made with the same recipe as biscuits, but what distinguishes dumplings is that they’re boiled, not baked. They’re usually cooked in some sort of soup or broth, which gives them more flavor than plain biscuits.
Any small, firm, individually-cooked baked sweet in the US is a cookie, regardless of whether it’s shaped or irregular.