While I’ve shared a basic Southern gravy recipe here before, if you’re thinking of making biscuits and gravy it can’t be done with restaurant style gravy. It must be made with sausage gravy.  Sausage gravy is a Southern staple.  It can be found in nearly every restaurant and diner in the South and the Southwest and is undoubtedly made in nearly every home in the area as well.

Nothing quite compares with biscuits and gravy.  It’s not a fancy meal.  It shouldn’t be made into a fancy meal.  It’s peasant food at its best.  Pure, simple and filling.  It is food born from a need to feed a family with only what was on hand and feed them well.

This is my mother’s recipe.  I have not adapted it, modified it or otherwise mucked with it.  On the contrary, I’ve invested over 20 years of my life trying to perfect my mother’s technique. At first I tried to make it my own. These attempts resulted in some pretty good gravies, but they just weren’t “right.”  It’s taken a long time, but I think that if my mother was still with us, this gravy would make her proud.

The real secret behind sausage gravy is in both the sausage and in the way it is cooked.  The sausage used in this dish should be of the bulk store variety and preferably be very fatty. Also, low, gentle heat should be used to cook the sausage.  This low cooking temperature allows the fat in the sausage to completely render out of the meat.  The resulting grease is the heart and soul of a great gravy.  It ads the base flavor, body and character of everything that comes later.

Another key to success is in cooking the sausage properly.  The aim here isn’t to just barely get your sausage cooked through, but to take it just a tiny bit past that point.  At the end the sausage should be slightly dry.  It should then be strained for at least five minutes through a fine mesh sieve or colander and the drippings should be reserved.

From this point making sausage gravy is an identical process to any other flour-based pan gravy.  Return the oil to the pan, add flour and brown, season, add milk and stir, stir, stir!  I use all-purpose flour in my gravies, but there are those who swear by Wondra.  I’m not going to judge, but I’ve never ended up with lumpy gravy, so all-purpose is just fine by me.

Of course a gravy of this caliber needs something to be lavished upon.  The go-to (and highly preferred) vehicle for gravy delivery is the plain ol’ buttermilk biscuit.  The light, flaky, multilayered biscuits of the North are not appreciated here.  The gravy just makes them soggy and they don’t have the right texture.  You gotta have a biscuit with some heft to it.

And there, my friends, you have it.  The ultimate experience in breakfast, brunch or late night munching fare. The culinary pinnacle of flour, milk and flavor.  A humble food that deserves a place in every kitchen.  My mother’s sausage gravy.  Give this a try the next time you’re craving a little love. Trust me, there’s a lot of love in this recipe.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

(From the archives: this is one of my earliest recipes and I noticed that it could use some polish and a bit of a facelift.  The recipe has ben rewritten to read more clearly, etc,  Enjoy!)

While chili (particularly “Texas Red”, and yes, that means no beans.) is the official state food of Texas, there is little doubt that the unofficial state food of Texas is the chicken fried steak.

I’ve known the wonderful delight of chicken fried steak all my life. While I grew up in California’s wine country, my family and many others were originally dust bowl immigrants from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Southern cuisine was my staple as a boy, mixed with a strange variety of Italian, Mexican, Hungarian and Asian influences. The restaurants of Northern California don’t serve “country fried steak” they serve chicken fried steak, and that’s the way we like it.

I know that there are some Texans who will rail at me for even hinting that any Californian can produce a real chicken fried steak, but we do, at least it’s done well North of San Francisco, where the population is mostly rural. That being said, this is still a Texan tradition, and I’m passing it on as such, as is only fair, since it moved with our families from Texas, Texoma, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

If you’ve never had, or heard of chicken fried steak, you may wonder exactly what it is. In a nutshell, it’s a steak cooked in the same manner as Southern fried chicken. That is to say it’s breaded and fried in a cast iron skillet with plenty of oil (read Crisco, lard or perhaps, in rare cases, suet) until it’s crisp, juicy and delicious and slathered in gravy, either made from the pan drippings (not my preference, I just don’t like beef gravy) or in Southern White Gravy.

If served for breakfast or brunch, you’ll find it with a side of fried potatoes or hash browns. When served for dinner it will usually be found accompanied with mashed potatoes, also slathered in gravy, and some form of vegetable or other. (This is where your basic green bean or, better yet some fried okra comes into play.)

So, no matter where you hang your hat, kick your feet up, set a spell and make up a bit of Texas for supper tonight. You’ll be glad you did, I assure you.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

There’s nothing that speaks to me of home like a tall, frosty cold glass of iced tea.  Whether you like yours sweet in the southern tradition or with little or no sugar, nothing says summer like iced tea, and nobody…  And I mean nobody, made it better than my mother did.

Agree or disagree with the last statement as you like, this is my family’s closely guarded recipe for iced tea.  It’s not something that I think has been shared before, but it is something that I think the world needs to know about.  It’s the drink my wife requests when she’s home to visit.  It’s what my sister expects to find in my refrigerator in the summer months.  It’s the one thing I can”t live without when the temperatures start climbing into higher didgits.

And there is only one right way to make it…  At least for us.

The key to good iced tea is to make it strong.  That way the ice  doesn’t dilute the taste of the tea.  Too many people forget this.  If it’s hot outside, the ice in your glass is going to melt, and your tea tastes more like sweetened murky water than it does of anything else.  It’s something I can’t tolerate, and is one of the reasons I rarely order iced tea in a restaurant .

I hope you enjoy this one.  It’s a very simple recipe that has seen my family through many decades of summers, BBQ’s, parties and outdoor gatherings.  It has outlived both of the women who perfected the recipe and has comforted hundreds of people on hot California afternoons.

This is a piece of my life that I need the world to share with me.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

I may have been born and raised in California, but my family in its entirety hails from the Midwest and the South.  The comfort foods that I grew up with were definitely not the same as those my friends were eating, since for a majority of them, their families had either lived in California for generations, or had roots on the East coast or in Italy.  Needless to say, they thought I was a bit strange.

For them, comfort foods were Mac n’ Cheese, Spaghetti, Lasagne, Some unnamed casserole or Mom’s Sunday Roast. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with these things, they simply don’t say “comfort food” to me.  They are all things that I enjoy, but when it’s time for me to feel warm, loved and safe in a world that throws far too many curves my way, I’m thinking about some good ol’ country staples.  I’m thinking fried potatoes, beans and hocks, greens and cornbread.

The world has been throwing our family a lot of curves lately.  There’s stresses from my wife’s job(s), the stresses of trying to keep a steady income flowing from my Internet ventures and to top it all off, there’s the news that our son, who just turned two, is very likely learning disabled and will be undergoing a fairly comprehensive evaluation and course of action very soon.  Add all of that up and you have one foodie who could do nothing else but dig in the pantry for some beans and cornmeal.  It was time for some comfort, and I wanted all of it as fast as I could get it.

Did it help?  Of course it did.  For just a few moments at least, while the house filled slowly with the aromas of slow-simmering beans, cornbread baking in the oven and potatoes sizzling in their traditional cast-iron skillet I didn’t have to worry about anything more than whether or not I needed more seasoning, or if the heat was too high.  At the end I sank into bed full and content, just as warm and cozy as I would have been when my mother still tucked me off to sleep at night.  All-in-all, it was a good day, and the stress of the world could wait for the morning.

This is more a collection of variations than a set of recipes, but I’m pretty confident that at least a few of you will enjoy some of the differences from the originals.  I’ll link to the original basic recipe, then list the changes for each dish in turn. You may just find that one of these recipes ends up on your permanent list of comfort foods as well.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

White gravy is a staple of Southern cooking. In the South and Southwest we use it to top everything from biscuits to French-Fries. Every family has its own unique method of making Gravy, and most families will tell you theirs is the best gravy ever made. (They’re all right, by the way. It’s a family thing.)

Then of course, there’s the stuff you get in restaurants across the country. In the South and Southwest it’s pretty close to what’s made in homes all across the area but once you start moving North, the story changes. The gravy starts turning into a floury-tasting ooze with all the culinary soul of preschool paste. This affront to gravy is usually made from a pouch or bag by someone who has never had real Southern gravy and has probably never cooked anything for themselves at home.

Some companies have obviously noted that this foul mix needs more attention. I’ve seen it labeled as “Southern style with ham” in which tiny bits of processed ham are added in an attempt to mask the utter blandness of it all, and I’ve seen the same done with bacon and sausage.

It doesn’t help, it’s still awful and there’s no getting away from that. It’s usually too thin. It sets up like mortar if not eaten promptly, and is usually used to hide even worse attempts at biscuits or other southern staples.

So restaurant owners, listen up and let me tell you how to do it right! I was raised on white gravy, and I just can’t take it any more!

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Popularity: 39% [?]

If you say beans in the southwest, it’s taken for granted that you mean pinto beans. In Tex-Mex cooking they serve ‘em up refrito, or refried, you get ‘em in the stores with or without jalapeños, or kick ‘em up a bit with some chili powder and cumin and call ‘em Ranch Style.

Up in Oklahoma where my family hails from, you serve ‘em with ham hocks or bacon, with cornbread and fried potatoes on the side. Of course, you can serve what you’d like, but I’ll stick with my old standby. Read more…

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ll just start out by saying, this is not a fancy recipe. These are the fried potatoes I grew up eating; made in a cast-iron skillet and fried in bacon grease over controlled heat. The recipe isn’t complicated, but mastery of it takes time. A lot of time.

In my case it took somewhere around 10 years.

There are no times associated with this recipe. In all actuality, it’s more a set of guidelines. You have to be able to feel when it’s time to move on to the next step. It’s not hard, but it’s not easy, either. It’s kind of like walking, simple as an adult, but it was a bugger when you first started doing it! Read more…

Popularity: 3% [?]

I was trolling my usual food blog haunts the other day when I stumbled across a post about cast iron pans and cornbread at The Homesick Texan. I realized two things very quickly. One, she has as much dislike for sweet cornbread as I do. Two, I hadn’t made cornbread in quite a while.

For those of you from the northern climbs; In Texoma we make our cornbread for dinner. It’s not a dessert item and therefore has no sugar. (I know she would disagree and say all of Texas, but I’ve been served sweet cornbread more than once since I moved here. and since I’ve never visited Southern Texas, I can’t speak for them.) Read more…

Popularity: 1% [?]