Wednesday, March 29, 2017

SS: Southern Biscuits and Gravy Casserole

Yeah, I know. I said I was back and then flaked for a month. A month I would rather not re-live, actually. I did not do much cooking and I have no excuse other than I did not want to. That being said, I flipped through and found this little gem a few weeks back and I am not one to ever turn down biscuits and gravy so: challenge accepted.

I've said before that biscuits and gravy is a delicate thing. One should not pretend to know what they're doing - I'm looking at you, Cracker Barrel - because it can ruin people's lives. Seriously, that was over two years ago and I'm still scarred. However, the author of Skinny Suppers, Brooke Griffen, is a southern girl so I had really high hopes and happily rustled up these ingredients and went to town.

First, you whisk together some eggs and cheese and milk and stick that in a pan with some turkey sausage links plopped right on top. She has you bake it for what sounds like a reasonable amount of time. This is the part where I start to get reallllly skeptical. This is what it looks like when you take it out of the oven:

The cheese melted, so that's good...but overall this was still incredibly runny.

Now, I understand that because we are adding biscuits on top that will need to bake that we do not want the egg to be fully cooked yet. However, I did not feel that they should be this runny at this stage and cooked them for about 10 minutes longer, which didn't do much but made me feel a little better. Oh, I also took the liberty of adding chopped orange, red, and yellow bell peppers because this was dinner and I felt better knowing there were veggies in it...also, I like bell peppers in my eggs for breakfast so this wasn't too far of a stretch. 

While this is "cooking" she has you make the gravy. 

I always add way more pepper than called for because I like a peppery gravy.

This went as expected and without issue. Pour it all over the under-cooked egg mixture and toss some Pilsbury biscuits on top. Now. Because I felt that the eggs did not cook enough in the beginning, I cooked these longer than the suggested time. You will also want to do this. The biscuits will get a nice golden brown on top, but the egg will also have time to cook through. 

Voila!

Because I have children, or because I have a strange appetite - I'll own it, this is not my first recipe with biscuits on top. I have had recipes where, because the biscuits are close together and on top of food, instead of straight on a baking sheet, they never cook. What you are left with is cooked biscuit tops and raw biscuit dough on the bottom. This recipe had potential for absolute disaster because of the short cook time for the eggs and the nestled biscuit dough. All factors pointed to pizza here. 

I cooked the shit out of this. I think I just about doubled the cook time and it turned out nicely. I did find a few problem areas, but nothing to write home about. In the future I will cook the eggs until firm with a little jiggle and there should be no issues. As for taste? This was freaking delish. Tweak it a bit and you've got yourself a winner. 

Holler if you want the recipe cause my kid is crying and I'm about to make bedtime half an hour earlier fa sho.