The West Old & New Vol. III Issue III March 2014 | Page 18

Biscuits & Gravy
Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the United States and definitely on many menus in restaurants, cafes and bakeries in Montana.
It consists of soft dough biscuits covered in either sawmill or sausage gravy. Sawmill gravy comes from the Southern cuisine
and is a gravy used on chicken fried steak as well. It is essentially a Béchamel sauce, with the roux being made of meat drippings
and flour. Milk or cream is added and thickened by the roux; once prepared, black pepper and bits of mild sausage or chicken
liver. For biscuits and gravy meat and the drippings of cooked pork sausage are used, but any ground meat can be substituted such
as hamburger or bacon. The gravy is often flavored with black pepper.
American English and British English use the word "biscuit" to refer to two distinctly different modern foods. Early hard biscuits (North American: cookies) were derived from a twice-baked bread, whereas the North American biscuit is similar to a savoury European scone.
Early European settlers in the United States brought with them a simpler and easy style of cooking, most often based on meat,
ground wheat and warmed with gravy. After the first pigs were carried from England to Jamestown, Virginia in 1608, they became
popular as a home-grown edible animal.
The meal emerged as a distinct regional dish after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), when stocks of food stuffs
were in short supply.

Basic Biscuit Recipe
2 cups flour
½ cup butter or vegetable shortening
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Milk, cream or water
Mix dry ingredients together, add shortening breaking it up into
small pieces and covering them in flour until they are small. Add
enough milk, cream or water to make a soft sticky dough. Turn
out onto a counter and make the dough about a half inch or better
in height. Cut out your biscuits. Bake at 400 degrees until golden
brown.

Sausage Gravy
1 Pound ground sausage
3 Tablespoons Flour
Milk
Salt & Pepper
Cook the ground sausage in a pan until done,
breaking it into small chunks. Add the flour and
stir until all of the meat is covered with the flour.
Add milk half way in the pan and stir until it thickens. Add salt an pepper to taste.
The West Old & New Page 18