Drop Biscuits with Peppery Sausage Gravy

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

No rolling, no biscuit cutter, no chilled butter theatrics — just shaggy drop biscuits baked hot and fast while a skillet of pork sausage gravy comes together beside them. The whole trick is in the gravy: the flour cooks in the rendered sausage fat until it smells nutty, so the finished sauce tastes rich and toasty instead of pasty, and a genuinely aggressive amount of coarse black pepper keeps it from going flat. Breakfast for four, on the table in about 45 minutes.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup cold buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted, for brushing

• 1 pound bulk breakfast pork sausage
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 cups whole milk, warmed
• 2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper, plus more to finish
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (optional)
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced chives or scallion greens, for serving

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 450°F and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Pour the 3 cups of milk for the gravy into a measuring cup and microwave 90 seconds, or warm it in a small saucepan, so it is hot to the touch — warm milk goes into the roux without seizing it into lumps.
2. Whisk the 2 cups flour, baking powder, sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. In a separate cup, stir the 6 tablespoons melted butter into the cold buttermilk; it will clump into small curds, which is exactly what you want — those butter bits are what make a drop biscuit flaky.
3. Pour the buttermilk mixture over the dry ingredients and stir with a fork just until no dry flour remains, about 15 strokes. The dough should be thick, sticky, and lumpy. Do not smooth it out.
4. Scoop 8 mounds of dough (a scant 1/3 cup each) onto the baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake 14 to 16 minutes, until the tops are deep golden and the edges are crisp. Brush with the remaining tablespoon of melted butter as soon as they come out.
5. While the biscuits bake, crumble the sausage into a cold 12-inch skillet and set it over medium heat. Cook 8 to 10 minutes, breaking the meat into bite-size pieces and letting it sit undisturbed for the last 2 minutes so it browns in patches. Do not drain the fat.
6. Add the 2 tablespoons butter and let it melt. Sprinkle the 1/3 cup flour over the sausage and stir constantly for a full 2 minutes over medium heat. The mixture will look like wet sand and then start to smell toasty and nutty — this is the step that removes the raw-flour taste, so give it the whole 2 minutes.
7. Pour in about 1/2 cup of the warm milk and stir hard until it forms a thick paste with no lumps. Add the remaining milk in two more additions, stirring smooth after each. Raise the heat to medium-high and bring the gravy to a bare simmer.
8. Simmer 4 to 6 minutes, stirring often and scraping the pan bottom, until the gravy coats the back of a spoon and a line drawn through it holds for a second. Stir in the black pepper, nutmeg, cayenne, Worcestershire if using, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
9. Taste and adjust: it should be assertively peppery and just salty enough that you want another bite. If the gravy is thicker than you like, loosen it with warm milk a splash at a time; if it is thin, simmer another 2 minutes.
10. Split the warm biscuits and spoon the gravy over the top. Finish each plate with another crack of coarse black pepper and a scatter of chives, and serve immediately.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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