For anyone with Southern roots in the family, it's a known fact that nothing offers quite as much full-bellied comfort than a warm bowl of biscuits and sausage gravy. A classic regional dish, biscuits and gravy has a knack for taking the edge off and brightening a mood at any time of day. We strongly recommend making your own flaky golden biscuits for this dish. Making biscuits from scratch is actually a real treat for the home cook, as biscuits happen to be one of those fantastic quick breads that take just five to 10 minutes to prepare and call for only simple pantry items. Instant gratification never tasted so good.
For the sausage, we recommend using your favorite pork breakfast sausage. If you choose a sausage that is already flavored with fennel, you might want to skip the fennel seeds in this recipe so as not to overpower the dish. The trick with biscuits and gravy is to choose a fatty sausage that will render down and leave you with enough drippings to create a gravy base. Southern comfort food at its finest!
Slow cooker biscuits and gravyIngredients1 pound pork sausage
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
3 cups milk
1 10.5-ounce can cream of chicken soup
Homemade biscuit dough (see recipe below)
For the biscuits: 2 cups flour
1 teaspoon sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold butter, cubed
3/4 cup milk
Directions1. For the biscuits, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together in a medium-sized bowl.
Add the cubes of butter to the mixture.
Use the pads of your fingers to rub the butter into the flour until crumbly.
Slowly pour the milk into the middle of the crumbly mixture.
Knead until a biscuit dough forms.
2. Cook the sausage in a dry frying pan over medium heat.
Remove the cooked sausage from the pan but keep the drippings.
Add the butter to the drippings, and heat until melted. Slowly add the flour, salt, pepper and fennel seeds, stirring with a whisk until smooth. Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly until well-blended.
Stir in the soup, and set to one side.
3. Form the biscuit dough into 2-inch balls (if using refrigerated dough, cut into quarters). Grease the bottom of a 4- or 5-quart slow cooker. Place the biscuit dough up the sides of the slow cooker
Create a hollow middle.
4. Add sausage into the hollow created by the dough.
Pour the sausage gravy into the middle of the biscuits, over the sausage, and then cover with three paper towels.
Cover with the lid and cook on a low setting for 4 hours.
Pro tip: Although we recommend making your own easy biscuit dough, you can easily use store-bought dough instead. If you prefer this method, we recommend using 2 12-ounce cans of refrigerated biscuit dough for this recipe.
