Biscuits and Gravy

I didn't make dinner last night. The boys were at a scouting event so it was just me and the little one. I had leftovers; she had a slice of deli ham and some cheese. She was a happy little camper.
So I decided to go through a few of my recipes and find a favorite to post. This particular one is requested by my teen quite often, and most recently I made it for his birthday dinner a few weeks ago. You would not believe just how perfect the gravy turned out. It was SO GOOD. The biscuits, well, that's a whole nother story. Which of course I will get to, in a minute.

Here's what you need for the gravy:
1 pound bulk pork sausage
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
6 tablespoons flour
3 1/2 cups milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

And this is how it goes together:
You could use a very large sauce pan and it might fit, but I like to use my dutch oven. So, cook the sausage in a dutch oven (or that very large saucepan) until it's no longer pink. If you wanted to add diced onion, do that before you cook the sausage. I think it would be tasty, but I never remember to do it. And do you know why? Because it's not on the ingredient list, that's why.
Moving along....after you cook the sausage, stir the butter in until it's melted. Sprinkle the flour over the sausage, and stir it in. Gradually add the milk. To me this means, add about a half cup, and stir. Add about another cup, and stir. Dump the rest in, and, you guessed it, stir. Add your salt and pepper, and stir (there's a lot of stirring involved in this recipe). Bring it to a boil, and cook and stir (I told you!!) for about 4 minutes. When it's thick like it should be, it's done.

Now for the biscuits. You could use Jiffy or Bisquick and your biscuits should be perfectly fine. Unless you do what I did last time - I used Bisquick, but I didn't quite have enough, and apparently I'm not very good at guessing measurements. We had little hockey pucks on the outside, with a very yeasty tasting bready consistency on the inside. That didn't work out well.
The other option, is to make some drop biscuits from scratch, which is what I should have done.

This is the recipe I've used in the past:
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons butter or margarine, melted

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl. In another bowl, combine the milk and butter, then stir into the dry ingredients just until blended. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.

If you do this, you'll have some delicious biscuits to serve your sausage gravy on. Since I didn't do this, and had hockey pucks, I served the gravy on hash browns, which I had planned on having with the meal anyway. I just used the store-bought rectangular preshaped patties that you pop in the oven so I wouldn't have to try to watch potatoes and gravy at the same time.

This made enough for me, my teen, my tween, and my toddler; with a little left for the hubby to have for breakfast or lunch the next day.