2 - Appalachian History of Biscuits & Gravy and Sausage Gravy Croquette Recipe

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Hello, welcome back to the Biscuits and Gravy Podcast. This is episode 2. This is a little history lesson. So if you like history, if you're kind of a nerd like I am, then you will enjoy this episode I think. So I did a little digging and because our podcast name is Biscuits and Gravy, I thought, hey, we should know the history of Biscuits and Gravy, don't you think? So

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What I found out in my research is that biscuits and gravy

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Excuse me. We have had a house full of sickness this week. You might hear a tickle in my throat or a random cough and I apologize for that but we're going to go with it because this is just the few minutes I have where it's quiet in the house to record a podcast episode because everyone is gone. Alright. So sausage gravy and biscuits. Let's talk about the origins of that.

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So this is a distinctive regional dish from the South. It came about after the American Revolutionary War that we think, according to the records. And it was when the food was in short supply. So.

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Breakfast was obviously a necessary part of the day, a necessarily the most substantial meal of the day for a person that was going to work on the plantations in the South. So because of the lack of supplies and money meant that this meal had to be cheap. So...

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that is how this came about. Pork and Adam and I, my husband and I know this just from farming for the past, I don't know, almost decade now, I guess, that pork is really the meat of the poor because pigs don't really need a lot. Pigs can eat kitchen scraps.

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If you have a dairy cow, your dairy cow can fatten your pigs up. Pigs forage in the woods, they eat a lot of acorns, and things like that. It really was something I think that most farms probably had access to, if not raised, on their own.

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when they first started putting biscuits and gravy together, the biscuits were beaten, according to one resource that I saw, were beaten by workers who took, it took several hours to beat these biscuits because this was before any sort of leaven where they were using baking powder or anything like that.

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and they needed something. These biscuits obviously were very hard as you can imagine and so they needed something to soften them up. So this is where the the gravy came from was basically just to make it palatable. Make it so that it would be able to be washed down basically. Salt mill gravy which is another term that people use sometimes you'll see that on a menu when you go to a restaurant. Salt mill gravy.

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Sawmill gravy was actually originated in southern Appalachia. So it is close to home here in North Carolina to us. And this originated in the late 1800s and it was a way to stretch the dish. So it was really easy to make like the roux from the pan drippings and what sawmill gravy is and how it's a little bit distinguished from

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sausage gravy is that sawmill gravy is only supposed to have the meat drippings in it not pieces of actual sausage or bacon or whatnot and it also is supposed to be a mixture of flour and cornmeal to thicken it. So there is a French word for a sauce like this called béchamel and it's only made with flour though. So

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That's how sawmill gravy is a little bit different from that. It has supposedly cornmeal in it also. I've actually never made sawmill gravy like that. I've never put cornmeal in my sausage. I even read in one of the resources that some of the workers... Okay, so obviously in Southern Appalachia there were a lot of sawmills. That is where this kind of got its origin, its name.

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from was that the sawmill workers would take these biscuits and gravy to work with them. And that I even read that some of the the workers would even joke with each other because of the cornmeal. Excuse me because of the cornmeal that was added. Sometimes maybe it was a little too much cornmeal.

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and they would actually joke with each other that it was sawdust that had been added instead of a cornmeal to their lunchtime meal. So that is just a very short history lesson for you. If you have any more information that maybe I didn't cover in this or you have something in complete opposition to what I shared with you, then I would love to hear it because I'm kind of a history nerd. I love to hear...

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all the things especially when it comes to southern food. So please email me. I've got my email in the description and you guys can can email me any questions or any more comments you have on that. The second part of this podcast I wanted to share with you guys something that I talked to you about in episode one. Episode one was about a restaurant that I just fell in love with called

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Supperland in Charlotte, North Carolina. So if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. And so Supperland served a sausage gravy croquette and Adam and I just loved them and I was like you know what I bet I can make these at home. So at the time of the recording of that episode I had not tried them but now I have

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And if you follow us on Instagram, you probably saw that I tried it and it was delicious. So I will definitely be continuing to make this as a little appetizer type dish for my family. I actually, don't tell anybody, I actually ate it for my meal. The other night, it was Friday night and I had cooked some vegetables and shrimp and some different like stir fry things.

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and these sausage gravy croquettes. And I ended up just eating the croquettes for supper. But everyone loved them. Even the baby was eating them up. So the way I made these, and just as a side note, I am working on a website to go along with this podcast that I'm really excited about.

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So one thing I did not share with you guys in the very first introductory episode is that when I was younger, kind of leading up to this, when I was much, much younger, I'm talking like high school, I created a website and I spent hours and hours, if my mom listens to this, she will remember my sister, hours and hours and hours.

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locked upstairs in a room where we had our computer. And remember guys, this was like when the internet was new. So it was new, it was, you know, there was hardly any kind of like help out there. There was absolutely no YouTube. So you couldn't just like find out how to do things. You had to just figure them out.

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and I decided I wanted to create a fan website for a band that I loved. I'm not gonna name the band because y'all will laugh at me. But, I spent hours and hours learning HTML code and tweaking this website. And so this deal, even though that was many, many years ago, I mean, at least probably 25 years ago,

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I still love stuff like that. I love designing. I used to own a business called Farmlife Outfitters where I designed graphic tees and promoted those and traveled all over for that business. And those are just some of the things that I love to do. And so when I started kind of putting things together for this podcast, I was like, I would love to just.

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I can at my leisure not because I have to but at my leisure I would love to create a website where I can Sort of like a podcast Website Where we can have transcripts on there from this podcast and also where I can just put Just some freelance Blog blog type posts and things of some travels even if I don't get a podcast episode out about it I can just put those

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Write-ups and pictures and things because it's kind of hard to share, you know visuals like in my Supperland episode where I was telling you guys about how the wallpaper looked and the chandeliers looked well as I've been working on this website I created a Supperland post and I've got all those pictures up on that Page so it's not published yet, but I will definitely let you guys know I'll put it in the show notes when the website is live and let you guys

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in on that so you can check that out as well. Okay. So, but for now, we do have our Instagram page where you can follow us. It's just Biscuits and Gravy podcast on Instagram. So I posted a picture of these sausage gravy croquettes that I made on there. So what I did was

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I looked around on the internet and there were not a lot of recipes. I was a little bit surprised. I thought I'd at least find a few. But I found this one guy who had done a recipe and actually watched his video on YouTube. And it was okay. I don't know if I would do it the exact same way that he did it. I didn't do it that way this time. But I did have to tweak it.

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from what he said I would have to, so if that makes any kind of sense. So what I did was I had made some gravy. So if you're not familiar with making gravy, the way that I do it, and I know there's a few different variations of this, but the way that I make gravy is I will cook our sausage, and this is sausage that we have grown on our farm, and we have ground and seasoned and everything. And so it is super.

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local because it is ours. And so I'm really proud and excited about that fact that I get to cook with that every day. But I cook our sausage in a pan and I usually, our sausage is very fatty so I will pour off some of that fat when I get done cooking it, just to leave, you know, a couple of tablespoons of fat at least in the pan.

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And then I will, and if you guys are familiar with me at all, if you ever followed us on YouTube, we have a YouTube channel, Shelter Mountain Farm, that I used to post on more regularly, that I have shared with you guys before then that I do not measure things. I eyeball everything. And usually it turns out okay, so.

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I mean, I don't know if that's just the sign of a lazy cook or what, but that's just how I do things. So I don't really have measurements for you. I just tell you to eyeball it, just feel it. I don't know. So I will take the fat, leave the fat in the pan, and then I will put some flour in the pan and start to mix it and brown the flour.

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And I can't really tell you a good measurement, but you'll just have to eyeball it. It'll become a little bit thicker. It'll become to where it doesn't really, it's not liquid anymore. It'll firm up. And then I'll usually add a little bit of salt to it and some pepper. And then I'll start pouring in some milk.

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gradually into it and using my whisk to whisk in the milk to incorporate that throughout the entire pan of brown flour. So once I get it to the consistency that I want it then I'll turn the burner off and that is our gravy. Now because it's sausage gravy I like to leave a little bit of the sausage

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little bits of sausage, especially the really crunchy ones, those are the best. So just little crumbles of sausage will be left in the pan when I'm doing this gravy. Yeah, and it's super yummy. So that's your gravy. Then for the croquettes, the recipe I followed said,

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was to let it cool, put the gravy in a container, put it in the fridge, let it get good and cool, and then take like an ice cream scoop, some sort of little spoon or scoop, and scoop off little balls. Well, mine apparently wasn't as firm. I mean, I left it in the fridge for a long time because this was actually leftovers. I didn't make gravy specifically for this recipe. We had leftover gravy from a meal.

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So I took it out and it was too soft. So I actually had to add some flour. If I was going to do this again, which I will do this again, and I'll probably tweak it again, I will add a little more salt as well to my gravy when I get it out of the fridge probably, if I have to add more flour to it to thicken it up. I don't know why the man's was so thick.

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that did it, I guess he just had a thicker gravy. I'm not really sure, or maybe he had a lot more flour in it to start with. So anyways, I had to add a little bit of flour, mix it in, and then it became hard enough for me to get pretty decent formed balls of gravy. And then he suggested doing the breading mixture of coating it with flour, a little bowl of flour, then coating it with an egg wash.

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and then coating it with some sort of breader. He made a breader I believe. I had a like seafood breader is what I used. I have a pretty good quality seafood breader that was already packaged and then I didn't have to make one up. So I used that and that worked pretty well. And then I had used lard. A lot of people will use, you know, peanut oil or

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Vegetable oil, we don't use vegetable oils. As we have come along in this journey, we know that those are not the best thing for our health. So we don't use vegetable oils. We'll use animal fats. We'll use lard or butter. Occasionally we'll use avocado oil or olive oil, but those are pretty much all we use to cook with. So...

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So I used lard and I had gotten it hot in a pan. I don't have like a deep fryer, so that wasn't gonna work for me this time. So I used a pan to fry it in. And it worked fine that way if you don't have a deep fryer or anything. And got the lard good and hot and just dropped them in there and they will start frying just like, they look like hush puppies is what they look like. And then I guess they fried for probably about,

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minute and a half maybe on each side maybe two minutes and then I flipped them over just because I didn't want to use so much I didn't want to waste so much lard and so I didn't have it really thick in my pan but then I got them out they were really a beautiful dark brown and crispy and kind of a little bit gooey on the inside because of the gravy it was just so delicious

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I highly recommend trying sausage gravy croquettes at home if you have not. It's a really neat thing to do to kind of switch up how you're using your gravy if you have any leftover gravy. I don't know if I would make gravy specifically for this unless I knew some people were coming over and I wanted to make them or something, but this is a cool way of just if you have extra gravy.

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okay well you know tonight for supper then we can have sausage gravy croquettes or you know tomorrow or whatever and um the guy that i followed his recipe sort of um the who i looked at his recipe anyways i never really follow recipes i just always like kind of put my own spin on things i'm just i don't know if i'm just a rebel like that or i think i know better than everybody else or something but uh i

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He had like a like a dipping sauce like a aioli dipping sauce that he used with his and that would be really good or I mean anything any ranch or You know anything like that. I think would be really good with it. We didn't have any dipping sauce We just ate them like they were and they were still delicious. So Alright, that is all for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope I have inspired you to try

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your hand at sausage gravy croquettes and maybe you learned a little bit about the origin of sausage gravy and sawmill gravy and how sawmill gravy actually originated in the Appalachians. So I will talk to you guys on the next episode and hopefully my voice will be a little bit clearer in that one and we will be all well in this household and I will talk to you next time, bye.