Mmmmm, biscuits with sawmill gravy, one of my favorite things in the world. Red-eye gravy is good, too.
Now I’m all hungry.
Mmmm, biscuits and gravy. Oddly enough, I’d never had this until about ten or so years ago. Mind you, my mom made it, every diner in town serves it, and everyone I know loves it; it’s probably the official state breakfast. I love gravy, I just never cared much for biscuits (blasphemy, I know).
I tried it when in a new relationship - you know, that stage where you’ll do anything, eat anything, whatever they want. Sweetie made homemade biscuits and gravy for weekend breakfast. And now I’m hooked! After avoiding it for 30+ years!! Dammit.
Sausage gravy is the ticket for biscuits. Bacon gravy is an OK substitute for most things but not so much for b&g.
My mom made cream gravy for everything. Breakfast? Cream gravy from sausage or bacon. Fried chicken or chicken-fried steak? Cream gravy from the frygrease. Pot roast or roast turkey? Brown cream gravy from the drippings. I have since discovered that there are other types of sauces and gravies, and they are yummy too.
I love gravy. It was the first thing I ever learned to cook, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a lumpy batch. I remember hearing people talk about lumpy gravy but I didn’t understand how they managed it until I was much older. 
Cooks magazine had a really easy, really good drop biscuit recipe a while back. I’ll see if I can find it.
Dragnabit, y’all have got me hungry too.
Crazy Otto’s in Lancaster, CA is (locally) famous for their biscuits and gravy. It’s probably been a decade since I’ve been there, since I’ve been in the PNW for five years now, and when I lived in L.A. I didn’t go to Lancaster after dad died. They may have changed it over the years, but in the late-'70s and into the '90s they made sausage and bacon gravy. It might have had the odd bit of ham in it too. It was the Best Gravy Ever. Maybe I’ll get down there again someday; and if I do, I hope the gravy is still great.
Most places? I’m not sure about most. Maybe you won’t find biscuits and gravy in free hotel breakfast everywhere, but every town in the US that I’ve eaten restaurant breakfast in since I learned to read has had biscuits and gravy on the menu. (I don’t know what was on the menu before I learned to read.) Admittedly my experience is mostly limited to the Pacific Northwest, where biscuits and gravy is logger food. Or it was, back in the day, when my grandpa was a logger; there’s also the influence of the Southern soldiers stationed at Ft. Lewis. Any way you slice it, biscuits and gravy might be regional originally, but I’d say it’s expanded pretty darn well.
I sort of feel like biscuits and gravy is America’s equal to Canadian milk in a bag: if you didn’t grow up with it, you’re surprised that it exists and either love it or hate it.
I really want biscuits and gravy now. Darn you all. Only not.
Damn you! I already said I was hungry, you’re killing me here! I’ve thought of doing this, now I’m going to have to try it. Christmas vacation coming up, yup I’m thinking that’s the ticket.
That’s what much of the rest of the US would consider “gravy” also. I’m from the northeastern part of the country, and I went to college in the Southeast, where I saw the “biscuits and gravy” concoction for the first time. It’s unheard-of where I grew up.
When I make gravy, it’s at Thanksgiving, and it’s made from the turkey drippings, thickened with flour. It usually winds up pretty opaque from the flour (other thickeners such as cornstarch would yield a more translucent result).
The breakfast gravy is more of a dish in itself (well, plus biscuits); the stuff that’s served with roast meats is more of a condiment.
All this talk about gravies, and not a single mention of cocoa gravy? For shame.
The breakdown for gravy consumption is this:
Sausage gravy for breakfast, over biscuits
Chicken gravy (made like sausage gravy, just in the left-over skillet from frying chicken), over mashed potatoes
brown gravy (sounds like it’s the same as Australian gravy) made with pork meals, served over the meat and potatoes
beef gravy (cross between brown gravy and chicken gravy) made with beef roasts, served over mashed potatoes
But the king of all gravies is the cocoa gravy, served over biscuits. This was the treat we didn’t get all the time growing up, whereas sausage gravy was a regular occurrence. It is made similarly to chocolate pudding, but served hot over biscuits. I’d take it for breakfast any day of the week, if I could.
[hijack]
Leiko, what is Canadian milk in a bag?
Mama Zappa, you reminded me of the dam’ yankee 
we had down here a while back. (He was a vendor rep, from Boston or Vermont or one o’ them furrin places.)
They made him order chicken-fried steak. I was highly entertained watching him poke at the meat in confusion, quietly ask his buddy what the sauce was, then carefully scrape off all the gravy and most of the crust, and politely eat it without a word. That was damn near heroic, because it looked like a really crappy meal.
Yeah, everywhere here SERVES chicken-fried steak, but that doesn’t mean you actually want to EAT it there. 
Also, hash browns are often included with the biscuits and gravy. I like to order that on days where I don’t give a damn about my health and add Tabasco sauce. The hotness of the Tabasco blends nicely with the saltiness/starchiness of the B, G, & HB.
Cocoa gravy?!?
Such a thing does not exist. burn the heretic Burn him!
Bizarre. Canucks are weird.
Well, that’s different.
Thanks Aesiron. I was imagining some kind of Canadian method of preparing gravy, or something, rather than . . . milk in a bag.
HEY!!!
There is only one place here where you can find good biscuits and gravy and good chicken fried steak. Both are in the same restaurant, luckily. Other places serve B&G, but it usually has the flavor of paste and the consistency of paint. The number of people who don’t have a clue as to how to make decent gravy continues to astound me.
By the way, I like to order an over easy egg on the side and slide it onto the top of the gravy.
Oh, it exists, and all other gravies bow before it.
I wonder if a vegetarian equivalent can be made. Not for me, but for when my sister comes to visit, we can have something semi-local that their kids never have. I can use fake sausages for the sausage part, but where do I get a good vegetarian base?
I had salmon based biscuts and gravy once. Just once though. It didn’t have the right spicyness.
Since we’re talking breakfast, I’d like to throw in another worthy contender - the favorite of foxholes and messdecks the world over, the incomparable SOS, or creamed foreskins on toast.
Civilians of course know it as creamed chipped beef on toast.
It’s getting harder to find outside of military circles, but I can still get it for breakfast at my VFW hall, or make it at home. It’s tough, though, scaling down a recipe intended to feed about a hundred people.
Before she retired, the head Lunch Lady at my school used to make SOS about once a month for the faculty lunchroom. Over fresh biscuits it’s not bad at all. I used to tease her that if I looked in her office, I’d find FM10.23-2 on a shelf.
eta: I made the mistake of having “Chicken-Fried Angus Steak and Eggs” for breakfast yesterday. Damn yuppified crap! That dish would have gotten you hung in Texas. Blech!