Biscuits and sausage gravy

• 4 tbsp infused butter

  Set your infusion strength above and this splits into infused and plain butter to hit whatever dose you want.

• 2 cupsall-purpose flour
• 1 tbspbaking powder
• ½ tspbaking soda
• 1 tspfine salt
• 6 tbspbutter — cold, cubed
• ¾ cupbuttermilk — cold
• 1 lbbulk breakfast sausage
• ¼ cupall-purpose flour
• 3 cupswhole milk — warmed
• 1 tspcoarse black pepper — plus more to finish
• salt

Method

1. 01

   Heat the oven to 450 °F. Whisk the biscuit flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, cut in the 6 tbsp of cold plain butter until the pieces are pea-sized, then stir in the buttermilk until a shaggy dough forms.

   450 °F

2. 02

   Pat the dough to 1 inch thick, cut 6 rounds without twisting the cutter, and bake until risen and browned. Set them aside while you make the gravy.

   450 °F · 14 min

3. 03

   Brown the sausage in a heavy skillet over medium heat, breaking it into bite-sized pieces and leaving the fat in the pan. You want fond — the browned film on the pan bottom is most of the flavor of the finished gravy.

   8 min

4. 04

   Sprinkle the ¼ cup of flour over the sausage and its rendered fat and cook, stirring, for two full minutes. This is the roux, and it is deliberately made with plain rendered fat: it runs hot and long enough that putting the infusion here would waste it.

   2 min

5. 05

   Pour in the warm milk a cup at a time, scraping the pan and whisking smooth between additions. Cold milk poured in all at once is how gravy goes lumpy.

6. 06

   Simmer gently, stirring, until the gravy coats the back of a spoon and a finger drawn through it leaves a clear line. It will thicken a little more as it cools, so stop slightly loose.

   6 min

7. 07

   Take the pan off the burner and wait a minute for the bubbling to stop. Stir in the infused butter a piece at a time until it disappears into the gravy. Off the heat it melts in without frying, and it enriches the gravy the way a mounted butter finish does in any pan sauce.

8. 08

   Season with the black pepper and salt now, after thickening — a gravy seasoned before it reduces ends up too salty.

9. 09

   Stir the pan thoroughly and ladle with the same measure onto each of the 6 split biscuits, stirring again between plates. Butter suspended in a warm gravy starts rising the moment the spoon stops, and the last plate off an unstirred pan carries more than the first.

10. 10

    Serve straight away. Refrigerated leftovers thicken into a paste; loosen them with a splash of milk over low heat rather than a hard reheat.