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Biscuit and gravy






However much fat your flour can hold, however much you want it to have, whatever type of fat you want, mixed in cold and smashed individually and rapidly with cold fingertips. Farm wives would hold their fingertips under cold water first then dry them so their body heat wouldn't melt the butter or lard. 

The flour also contains baking powder.

As you know, baking powder is baking soda with two types of acids that activate at different temperatures. This dough has buttermilk, an acid, so additional baking soda is included to balance. This double whammy of soda increases the salt-like elements that have a distinct salt-like taste so regular salt is greatly reduced to compensate. 


The buttermilk is drizzled in while mixing with a dinner knife while in the bowl until the lumpy mixture pulls together in one single lump. The mixture is not kneaded at all. It's smashed and that's about it. This was smashed and folded twice to pick up more flour so it has four layers, but that's not necessary and actually never really done. 



I should mention the oven is frightfully hot. But only at the start, then turned down to something reasonable. That's to shock the little dough piles in extreme heat to activate their chemical reactions, and to compensate for heat lost from opening the oven door, but if kept at that high temperature the biscuits would certainly burn. 


This is one of the things you can get with a whole roasted chicken. 

Leftover bits were shredded incompletely and broth from the chicken thickened with flavored roux.  All natural ingredients. Seriously. No artificial anything to extend its shelf life, its transportability, or its marketability, just plain butter, flour, and chicken and stuff. Oh, baking powder, that a chemical, but that could be omitted. 

What goes into my sauce?

The same old usual suspects

Along with the flour and butter in a small sauce pan for a roux
* mustard powder
* coriander seed ground to powder
* cumin seeds ground to powder
* black pepper
* sea salt
* hot red chile flakes
* sage

That forms a thick sludge like material that darkens to brown. 

When that lump of butter/flour/spices browns in a minute then all at once about 1 ounce of sake or white wine or beer or something with alcohol is dumped into the pot chased with cup of chicken broth and whisked vigorously to a thick sauce. It is a marvel to behold it come together in seconds like that, and it's done. 

3 comments:

  1. Sexy food, mister.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. You're really attractive. 2. Thank you for the tuna hush puppies recipe...my friend makes it all the time at parties but never shares the recipe. :(

    -A

    ReplyDelete

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