We often enjoy having breakfast for dinner. Not cold cereal, but eggs or biscuits and gravy, or sometimes even pancakes. During a particularly cold week I wanted something warming and comforting for the family dinner, but not the usual fare. I decided on a biscuits and sausage-gravy casserole. It turned out to be a great choice: a satisfying meal that warmed us up after a session of recovering a stuck truck from a long, icy driveway.
Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy Casserole
- 1 pound ground pork sausage.
- 5 tablespoons butter
- 1/4 cup flour
- 3 cups milk
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 cup chopped green onions divided in half
- 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 8 jumbo refrigerator biscuits
Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease an 11-by-7-inch baking dish and place it on a baking tray larger than the dish (in case any casserole spills over during baking).
You may want to make your own biscuits instead of using the store-bought. That’s fine, just cook your sausage before you make the biscuits and roll the biscuits out to 1/4-inch thickness.
Brown your sausage in a large skillet. You will be making the gravy in this skillet, make sure it will hold around 5 cups of material. Remove the sausage and drain.
Melt the butter in the skillet. Whisk in the flour. Gradually add the milk, whisking constantly over a medium high heat. Add the salt and pepper. Keep whisking.
Bring the mixture to a boil – still whisking – and let it cook for 2 minutes.
The mixture should be thickened into gravy. Remove from heat (you may stop whisking now) and add the sausage back into the gravy.
Open your jumbo refrigerator biscuits and split each biscuit in half (still round but thinner). Place 8 biscuits in the bottom of the greased baking dish. Spoon in half the sausage gravy and top with 1/4 cup of chopped green onions.
NOTE: if you are not fond of onions, reduce these as the result is a definite onion flavor.
Lay in the other 8 biscuit halves, top with the remaining sausage gravy and onions. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese over the top.
Bake uncovered for 40 minutes.
The result is a casserole with the wonderful southern flavor of sausage-gravy and biscuits except that the consistency is more like dumplings. It’s a stick-to-your-ribs meal that will warm and revitalize you after a tough day of battling Old Man Winter. I served mine with fried potatoes, but fried apples would be another good choice.
This recipe yields 4 to 8 servings, depending on how ravenous your crew is.
Typical prep time is 1 hour.
Enjoy!
