What's for breakfast?

I had toast dipped into homemade southern brown gravy that I made from bacon drippings and bits. I also had orange juice and an aspirin--just in case. It's a shame that good brown gravy is so BAD for you, because I make it sooooo well. *sigh*

So what is/was/will be on your plate this morning?

I think I will attempt it.

I have an amazing Southern Buttermilk Biscuit recipe that I've used for years and years, and homemade brown gravy is about the easiest thing in the world to make. :hi:

Gimme gimme.

I got distracted reading a bunch of joke threads, and then I had to go retrieve my personal cookbook from the kitchen. I've been hand-writing my recipes in a special big spiralbound journal for years, so I can hand it down to my kids as an heirloom someday. This is not a normal recipe--this is a recipe plus my personal method of preparing said recipe. Enjoy!

Oktoberain's Buttermilk Biscuits

(recipe makes about 20 biscuits, give or take 2 depending on the size of your biscuit cutter)

4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup lard OR Manteca shortening (Manteca is shortening that has lard mixed into it--cheap, and great for biscuits! If you can't find lard or manteca, you can use plain Crisco, but the biscuits won't be as tender and yummy)
1 1/3 cups buttermilk OR sour milk (make sour milk by adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the milk--it works just as well as buttermilk. Do NOT use that powdered buttermilk stuff--it's awful, and your biscuits will turn out small, hard, and mean.)

Get your utensils ready first--you'll need the following:

Flour sifter, large mixing bowl, rolling pin, a big baking sheet (preferably dark, and UNGREASED), sets of measuring cups and spoons, a dinner fork (or a pastry cutter, if you're fancy-schmancy), a regular spoon for stirring the sour milk (if you're not using buttermilk), a bigger spoon for stirring the dough ingredients (a wooden one works best for me), some plastic wrap, a biscuit cutter (in a pinch, use an inverted drinking glass dipped lightly in flour), and large flat surface for rolling out and cutting.

1. Stick the sifter into the large bowl. Measure your dry ingredients into it, half at a time, and sift them down into the bowl. Discard any flour pebbles, etc. in between siftings. Make sure the dry ingredients are well-mixed.

2. Measure out your lard or shortening, and drop it on top of the flour mixture. Hold the bowl next to your body, and use the dinner fork (or pastry cutter) to "cut in" the lard. If you're using a fork, just press the fork down through the shortening and flour and pull it toward your body, while turning the bowl. This takes a while! The flour should have a crumbly "crackermeal" appearance by the time you're done, with no big lumps of lard left.

3. Measure out your buttermilk (or prepare your sour milk by adding the lemon juice and stirring until it looks curdled). When it's ready, add it to the flour mixture and use your wooden spoon to stir it in until the dough starts to turn sticky--usually no more than 20 seconds. Scrape the spoon, set it aside, and go wash your hands.

4. If the dough is still pretty sticky, flour up your hands and sprinkle more flour on top of the dough. Flip the whole mass over and flour it again a little at a time until it's not sticky anymore, then pop it out of the bowl and knead it LIGHTLY and GENTLY on a lightly floured surface--no more than 2 or 3 turns, usually. Overkneading biscuit dough ruins it, because kneading builds the gluten and makes the biscuits come out tough and chewy. You want your dough to be soft and fragile-feeling, not sticky to the touch, or firm like bread dough.

5. Wrap it in plastic wrap, put it back into the mixing bowl, and chill the dough for about 20 minutes. Use this time to clean your workspace up, because you'll need it again shortly.

6. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees

7. Remove the dough from the fridge, and turn it out into a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle a tiny bit of flour on top, then use the rolling pin to gently roll it out to about a half-inch thick. Fold the dough in half and roll it gently again to about a half-inch thick (this helps create a "break layer", making them easier to split later). It's fine if your dough is slightly thicker than a half-inch, but you never want to make it *thinner* than that. We want our biscuits to get tall and fluffy!

8. Grab your biscuit cutter, dip it in flour, shake it off, and start cutting out the biscuits. Get as many as you can out of the first cutting, because it's an Official Fact of Southern Biscuitmaking that the BEST biscuits come from the first cutting, when the dough has been handled the least.

9. Arrange your biscuits on the baking sheet. You can put them close together, because good biscuits expand UP, not out--a quarter inch of space between them is plenty. Bake the biscuits at 450 degrees until they turn golden-brown on top, about 10-12 minutes. Voila!

Gravy recipe in next post....

Okay, this is even less of an "official recipe" because rural Southern folks like myself learn to make this by hand without following directions. But I'm going to try and talk you through it--it's really very, very easy. I'm going to write this without assuming that you (or anyone else reading this) already know anything about making gravy, so don't be offended if I tell you something you already know. :)

Ingredients:

Fat of choice (6 tablespoons, roughly)
12 ounces of chicken stock (liquid bouillon, broth, etc.)
salt
pepper
flour
big nonstick skillet
a plastic or wooden spatula/caketurner or scraper

1. First, you need to figure out what type of fat you want to use. I recommend using either bacon or sausage drippings (the grease leftover in the pan after you fry bacon or sausage). If you use meat drippings, the gravy will have a bacon or sausage taste to it. You can also use manteca shortening, or plain lard, if you prefer the taste of brown gravy by itself. Normal Crisco will technically work, but (assuming you aren't vegan or vegetarian) animal fat tastes better for this. You'll need about 6 tablespoons of MELTED shortening/lard/drippings for this.

2. Measure out about 6 slightly rounded tablespoons of flour into a small bowl or cup, and set this aside for now.

3. Get your chicken stock measured out into a glass or bowl, and set it close to the stove.

4. Start heating up your fat of choice in the skillet, on medium-high heat. You want it to be hot, but not quite smoking. When the fat is hot, dump in the flour all at once and start stirring it into the fat. If the flour looks clumpy, add some more shortening/fat and let it melt.

5. Cook the flour in the hot fat over medium-high heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring and gently scraping the bottom of the skillet constantly, until it turns dark (usually an burnt sienna color), then dump in all of the chicken stock at once. It'll sizzle and steam like mad, and look watery at first. This is okay, I promise.

6. Reduce the heat to just medium, and keep cooking and stirring and scraping. You'll notice that within 5 minutes, it's starting to turn thick...thick...thick! If it's too thick for your taste, add a little more chicken stock, but be careful not to make it too watery. When it's nicely thickened up, start adding salt and pepper to your personal taste, always stirring constantly.

Serve nice and hot over fresh buttermilk biscuits, or with toast and fried potatoes. :)

half a pork chop one scallop a shrimp and part of a steak

I'm gonna get my pancake on.

as soon as the s.o. gets up. It's our once-a-week team meal fixing ritual. :)

I am getting drunk for breakfast...

shredded hash browns, fruit salad made of strawberries, blueberries and bananas, and a cup of coffee.