WTF Are American Biscuits?! Trying Biscuits & Gravy

Welcome back to another episode of Poppy Vs America 🇬🇧🇺🇸 the series where I take on the weird, wonderful, and DELICIOUS world of American food!

In today’s episode, I’m tackling a Southern staple: Biscuits and Gravy. Not the British kind of biscuit… no no… these are fluffy, buttery, scone-like creations covered in creamy sausage gravy. I was very skeptical, but spoiler alert… I might be a convert.

Expect chaos in the kitchen, some very British confusion, and a (surprising) food epiphany.

Have you had biscuits and gravy? Would you eat it for breakfast? Let me know in the comments!

#PoppyCooks #PoppyVsAmerica #BiscuitsAndGravy #SouthernFood #BritishChef #AmericanBreakfast #FoodieReaction

Welcome back to Poppy Versus America, where I am attempting to cook and rate some of America’s best dishes. And today I’m trying biscuits and gravy, which if you said here in the UK, you’d imagine a rich tea dipped in some bestow. Biscuits and gravy. Okay, this is a quintessential American dish of a a savory biscuit, which in the UK we probably call it a scone, which is like a heavy, quite dense, what’s that? I don’t know. Round and then it’s a sausage meat sauce gravy, which is usually quite pale, quite creamy, and spiced quite heavily. It is exciting to try this. I have tried it in America before. I’m interested to try making it because if you said biscuits and gravy to someone in the UK here, you’d be thinking about a digestive and a bit of bestow, which is two very different things which you would not put together. So, biscuits and gravy. Starting off with the biscuits again. Like, so in the UK we have scones or scon, however posh you want to be, which are basically this, but then they’re normally sweeter. You get fruits in them or you get sugars in them, but you can also get a cheese one which is actually delicious as well, but it’s essentially a very very similar dough which is quite hard and quite crumbly. So in here we’ve got some plain flour or allpurpose flour, a little bit of by carb, a little bit of baking powder and a pinch of salt which I’ve already thrown in and then some buttermilk which we’re just going to mix through. that will give it that sort of lighter texture but also bring it into a dough and it gives it that kind of um a little bit of like soury tartness which you kind of want from a savory biscuit. It’s quite fun making biscuit. I haven’t made scones in years since like school. So that’s brings the dough together and then you kind of knead through butter. Now the key to anything that’s kind of a crumbly doughy kind of um texture is to make sure that you don’t melt the butter into the dough itself. So we’re going to throw the butter in nice and cold. And what it does is the butter protects the molecules um and also then expands and makes air bubbles which makes it fluffy and crumbly. Maybe I’ll need it with a spoon with a spatula for a hot minute cuz you usually do the breadcrumb where you kind of use your fingertips just to get the butter through. But I’m going to knead it with this. I get a bit more flour out. I really like the texture seems to be really good. This is a little bit different to what a British scone recipe would be. Also, just realized I said this is plain flour, but it’s actually self-raising flour, which I think in the US is it cake flour? I think it might be cake flour in the US, but I’m not 100% sure. Please, if you do know, let let me know. I’m going to try and properly knead it. It says need on the recipe. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe it’s easier if you shred in your butter. Sometimes if you want to get butter into stuff, you can like grate cold butter into it. Cuz these cubes aren’t going to qu I’m going to smush them. I’m going to smush them down again. Perseverance. Just keep trying. Eventually, it will be right. The butter’s in, but it is quite lumpy. But again, I do think that the butter does help it. You are meant to have a buttery biscuit because it helps puff it up with the steam. So, I’m going to I’m going to go with it. But as I as I feel it, there is some big old lumps of butter. Delicious of butter biscuits. Okay. Going to roll it into a nice dough. And then I’m going to flatten it out. You just flatten it out with your hands. And get the kind of height that we want, which you want to make about two biscuits out of this. I think that seems about the right height. So, I’m going about half an inch thick. See if I can get these to That’s two different ones. I feel like in the US, bigger is bigger, isn’t it? Bigger is better. Everything’s bigger. So, I’m going to go for the large one. Get away. That’s one. There’s one. And then let’s get at least one more out. And see if I can get one more out of it just for spares. Okay, they go into I’m going to egg wash them. Savory dishes always egg wash in pastry, but but but sweet dishes, you never egg wash. You just do like an apricot glaze. And if you want to do a really good egg wash, just do egg yolks and then wash it. Put it in the fridge for an hour. Wash it again. Put it in the fridge for an hour. Wash it. Wash it. Wash it. And then you get this beautiful delightful glaze which does make a massive difference. I don’t want to jinx it, but these look good. These look really good. So, they’re going to go in to the oven, which is preheated at at 200° C, which is around 390 400° F. And they cook for like 20 minutes or so. Tada. They are going for a little bake. Biscuits are in. They look massive already. And then we’re going to make the sausage meat. So, we’ve got I’ve got some sausage meat here. um which about 500 grams. It’s got a lovely fat content to it. And then you kind of you spice it up. So I think it’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of everything. Sage always goes very well with pork. Good bit of sage in there. Bit of ginger. I’m just eyeballing it cuz I think in reality it’s probably about a teaspoon, half teaspoon of each. Bit of mixed herbs, bit of cayenne pepper for spice and a bit of paprika. Bit of smoked paprika and a little bit of nutmeg. I love a bit of fresh nutmeg. And again, yeah, sausage always has a bit of nutmeg in. It’s kind of one of its flavors. I’ve actually we were in Seattle a few years ago and we went to Biscuit um which is a biscuits and gravy kind of shop and it was so cuz again we don’t really have anything like this in the UK at all but so biscuits really aren’t a thing here. We have we have our scones with jam and and clotted cream and a cup of tea. So biscuits is not something that we do. So we had them in Seattle and they were so good but so rich and we got one like original one with like the sausage gravy and then we had like a sweet one as well like a honey one but we ordered two basically and we could finish we had about a quarter of one of them that we couldn’t we could not finish them because they are just huge. And that’s something about the US is that your portion sizes are outrageous. Brilliant, but outrageous. Pork, herbs, spices, black pepper, bit of salt, and then we’re going to fry it off with a little bit of butter. And then we make a r with Okay. Lovely. Brilliant. Bit of salt. Get this frying off. It’s time for some Dolingo. I’m going to learn some new words that you use in America. I don’t know. Starting with rabbit food. That’s salad. Surely every That’s like just That’s what everyone says about a bit of salad on the side. A bit of rabbit food. Lettuce. Okay, cool. Lettuce. There we go. Got that one. A hockey puck is a I’ve heard of a hockey puck. Um is a burger. It’s a beef patty. Is a patty burger. A well done. A well done burger. Number three. Eve with a lid. Live. Live. Eve with a lid. Eve with a lid. A naked woman with a lid. Apple. Apple pie. Apple pie. Yes. Eve with a lid. Apple pie. That’s quite good. It’s a bit like cot me. It’s a bit like Yeah, I like it. Okay. Number four. Make it cry. It’s going to be rare. A rare steak or meat. It’s got to be juicy, isn’t it? Make it cry. It’s going to be bloody blue. Salt. Oh, you’re adding onion to steak. Oh, so make it. So, steak with onions. That’s clever. Make it cry. Yeah, I love that. Um, there you go. There’s your four new lingos of the day. So, we’ve got about 30 gram of butter, which is going to be the race of it’s going to be the base of our rue, but it’s also going to cook the sausage meat in it as well. Feel like I’ve got to crumble this a little bit really, haven’t I? It’s not patties. It’s like a It’s It’s a little bit like a meat sauce gravy. This feels like a lot of butter and fat. I don’t say that very often, but this does feel like quite a lot. I’ll just get it in and smash it up. This looks This is what I imagine like, you know, like Hannibal Lecter. That’s what I feel like human flesh probably looks like. That is absolutely rank. It will be lovely though. It’s going to go nice and brown and sausagey. It’s a lot of butter. It smells lovely though. Smells like lovely delicious sausage and butter. From what I can remember, it’s quite crumbly in the sauce itself. You get these lovely little crumbles of very um very wellcooked kind of caramelized sausage. Oh, it’s getting there. It’s getting there, guys. I’m going to leave it alone so it gets some color. No fear. The sausage is here. That’s what she said. And then we’ve got our to make a rue is it’s a fat, it’s flour, and then it’s um milk. And that’s it. That’s quite a to be fair, I’ve got to say, considering it’s something baked and also a sauce, it’s quite an easy recipe. And I believe it’s more of like a breakfast dish. In the US, if anyone is is here from the US, do you have biscuits with dinner as well? Like is it I’ve seen is it like fried chicken and biscuits and gravy as well cuz that sounds really good. Again, we don’t really have this sort of stuff here. Maybe we should start. Oh, these are the biscuits. They look they’re I don’t So, you know I was saying about the butter being very very thick. You can see where I went out. It’s getting hot. When I put them into the oven, there was a big lump of butter there. So, you can see where it’s expanded, melted, and disappeared. So, that’s what we’re saying about air bubbles. So, if you get it all the way through the mixture, you end up with this air bubble happening from the steam from the butter melting, and then the butter melts into the mix. So, you get these air bubbles and pockets. This one had lots of lovely butter around. I mean, they look pretty good. Get these off. so that they go crispy on the bottom. So into here my spitting sausages is a bit of flour which is going to make that base of the R. It’s going to it’s going to soap up all the fat and help thicken everything. And whenever you’re making a r make sure that you um cook it out long enough. It takes a while. Don’t just think that’s done now. Let it cook cuz otherwise you get like a texture of you can taste like flour. We don’t want to taste flour. We want to taste sausage. I’ve never thought about making a gravy with meat in it or making a sauce with the meat already in there. But this would this is delicious. Okay, I’m happy. I think that’s probably cooked out enough now. And then we add bit milk bit by bit. Yeah, milk and sausage does feel a little bit illegal, doesn’t it really? There’s something that doesn’t feel quite right. But once the milk’s kind of cooked out, it’s just making a sauce. It’s not that bad. I suppose you’d have butter with we’ve had a lot of butter with sausage. And I think, you know, when you’re when you look at different recipes, if you look at a traditional bolognese, which is more pork and beef, they always put milk in it. Thickens and creams up the sauce a little bit. gives it a nice texture. You can see every time I add a bit of milk, it just gets absorbed and that’s what the flour is there to do and it makes a lovely thick sauce. It smells really nice, actually. You know what? This takes me back to when I did I did beat Bobby Fle, right? And I I nearly beat him. I actually nearly beat him the one time. I did it twice. I didn’t on the second time. I really like bombed. But the first time we would did compete, you compete against another chef. I beat him and then I went on through to beat try and beat Bobby Fle and they wanted something like traditional British. So we did bangers and mash and I made my own sausages. So the week before we went, I went into a butchers, learned how to tie the sausages, uh bought a mincer for the KitchenAid and started mincing sausages and all that sort of stuff and practicing. But at the last in the last few seconds of the competition, right, for some reason, and this is how my mind works, instead of leaving the sausages whole, I thought, “Oh, there’s not going to be enough sausages for each plate. So, I’ll cut them in half.” But I cut them in half lengthwise, so you lose the lovely, you know, the casing of the saus and I lost mainly because of that. That’s literally what the judges said because the sausage texture was strange because I’d cut them in half lengthwise. But imagine I could have beat Bobby Fle. I could have beat him and then next time I went on I just was too nervous and I failed miserably. I’ve got to say I’ve done a few American TV cooking competition. I haven’t had a good experience with it. I’m not a cooking competition person. I’m more of a stand here and let me tell you about this recipe sort of person. The timings I hate it. It’s so scary. And everyone’s like American TV is very much cooking competition. They’re very you you you guys love a cooking competition. You love a Jeopardy. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. Not that I don’t think. I’m actually not cut out for it cuz I’ve lost every single thing I’ve ever been on. Okay, we’re almost there. Couple of minutes to let that thicken up again and we can start plating everything. I think you cut these open, don’t you? Cut them open, load it on top. So, I’m going to get a plate and then we’ll we’ll get it all together. So, let’s see how the biscuits are. I mean, I I hope they’re all right. There’s a nice bit of butter in there as well. I think probably need bigger biscuit next time. I’ll I’ll do a bit I think it needs to be bit heftier cuz there’s a lot of sauce. I’m going to do the British plating of what the sausage and biscuits are, which is going to be a little bit more dainty, I think, in comparison, which is about that. I don’t think I can get much more on there without it completely all-encompassing the biscuits. We’ll do a little bit of salt and pepper. Make it look pretty. Oh, I’m I’m excited to eat this cuz I actually the smell of it is beautiful. I know it’s going to taste nice. I can’t think of what this would be similarly to anything British. But if you do know if you have anything that you eat in a different part of the UK that’s something similar to this, let me know because I’d like to try that as well. But this is sash and biscuits, right? Sexy shots and then we can eat. So I have put on a little bit of chive for health. You know, a little sprinkle of greens. I thought it needed something, but that’s about it. I’m I’m excited. This smells so good. And I like I said, I’ve had it similar before, so I think I’m going to probably enjoy this. But it is rich. That biscuit looks good actually. It’s very buttery. Cheers. That is good. I think I could have gone a bit harder on the spices for the sausage meat itself. That’s a me thing. That’s not the dish. I the dish is good because it’s crunchy soft buttery biscuit and then this rich herby sausagey bashimal sauce which does work. It’s just very very heavy and rich. It’s good for this dish. I might add a bit of ketchup would be quite nice with it. Would you have ketchup with it? Feel like a little bit of acidic sauce would go really well with it. Anyway, for this a solid rating of probably an eight out of 10, maybe an 8 something out of 8.6 out of 10 purely because it is very heavy and very rich and I would I am going to struggle and I would struggle eating a whole plate of it. And this is the British kind of pulledback version, but it is it’s definitely one way to start the day. Okay, come through. Biscuits and gravy. Third place so far in my list of America’s signature dishes. A lovely, rich, hearty breakfast. And there’s nothing quite like it here in Britain. Maybe I need to start adding it to my brunch list. Remember, if you do enjoy watching all of this, if you like it, do give me a like, subscribe, comment. Let me know what you want to see next from all around the Americas.