Thursdays Are For Cooking!
This is a repost, but ONLY because yesterday was the First Day of Autumn, which means that it’s time to make your own stuff in the oven without feeling like you yourself are in the oven. We’ve had a chilly summer up here in my kingdom, but the temps last night dropped to even chillier and tonight, it’s the mid-40s. No reason, just Mama Nature thumbing her nose at the ecohippies who think the world is on fire or some such thing. (Not counting live volcanoes, of course. Hey, you could make a small fortune selling stuff like this to tourists at a live volcano tour!)
Bon appetit, and save the leftovers for breakfast with chipped beef or sausage gravy. Do I need to post the recipe for sausage gravy? Lemme know! Everybody has one. If you’re going to refrigerate the leftovers (like there will be any, right?), put them in a closed container first.
Baking Powder Biscuits from 1953
2 cups of sifted all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoon of salt
¼ cup of shortening
(NOTE: the recipe calls for ¼ cup shortening, but my Dad wrote in ½ cup; )
2/3 to ¾ cup of milk
– Cut the shortening into sifted dry ingredients until they are coarse crumbs.
– Make a well; add the milk all at once
– Stir quickly with a fork only until the dough follows the fork around the bowl.
– Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. (Dough should be soft)
– Knead the dough gently with the heel of your hand, 10 to 12 strokes: about ½ minute This makes tall plump biscuits.
– Roll or pat biscuit dough to ½ inch thickness
– Dip biscuit cutter in flour then cut dough straight down. Do NOT twist the biscuit cutter!!
– Bake on an ungreased baking sheet in a hot oven (about 450F**) for 12 to 15 minutes
** 450F is the temperature given in the 1952 BH&G cookbook. You might want to test this with one biscuit first.
For Buttermilk Biscuits:
– Sift ¼ teaspoon baking soda with the dry ingredients**
– Increase shortening to 1/3 cup
– Substitute buttermilk for regular milk.
**Baking soda reacts with buttermilk to make the dough rise.
Looks like I may rise to making dough instead of delivering it to banks.
Do you serve gravy with your puns, too? 🙂
Welp, we were waiting. Had to snak down on the last of my roasted beef beast wid taters, carrots, wid onyums that I had percurlated lowly in the crockett pot on weekend past. And it was worth the wait. Nothing like a good hot buttered milk bisket, smeared with butter, apple jelly, or topped with some sausage in gravy. Your Dad prolly penciled in the extry shortening ’cause he figured out that the little bit more made them catheads a little lighter and fluffier. Biscuit cutter? PHFFFT! Hand mix, knead, and pinch off a piece of dough ’bout the size of a cat’s head. Pro tip (for those that need it) on the patting out of them catheads…nice coating of flour on your hands keeps the dough from sticking and when your fingers separate from the biscuit, you make them little “ears”. Cold ingredients and a sho ’nuff hot oven (get a seperate oven thermometer, don’t rely on the built in) helps too.
For those that don’t have a sausage (or any other type of beast) gravy recipe (pro tip, use the drippings from the beast and some of the sifted flour) the K Roger store puts the Pioneer Brand of Gravy mixes on sale right regularly for $0.99. It’s not bad at all and is consistently smooth and lump free. Stock up on the different flavors, that $99.00 you spend on mix will bring you more pleasure than the 40 blue pills or 40 yellow pills will bring you for that same $99.00.
Tanks Mi’Lady…Let’s eat!
I have made gravy with bacon drippings, too.
Problem is, when you microwave bacon, the drippings are robbed of all the water the strips contain (yes, they do) and disappear, so I prefer to not nuke bacon unless there is no other choice.
Microwave bacon? That’s either classified as sacrilegious or animal abuse. Bacon gravy, country ham gravy/red eyed gravy (over grits), chicken gravy, cubed beef gravy”…(or any type of beast)”
There are folks out there that would violate several of His Commandments to get their hands on my cast iron collection.
Not really cooking but my Shinko pear trees ripened this weak.
Get out the canning equipment and save some serious cash, Sapper!
Butter or lard. There will NEVER be veggie shortening in THIS house!
Crisco is the devil’s work.
This is going in the file. Thanks Ex!
Any time!
Thanks Ex, great recipe! The great Alton Brown and his Ma Mae taught me to never roll your biscuit dough – just pat it out.
Not quite germane to this but related to a former post and conversation: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/costco-limit-purchases-supply-chain-inflation-pressure
Limited purchases for TP? Oh, NOT AGAIN!!!!
Even Wally World hasn’t sunk that low so far. Oh, it’s OK – past experience3 tells me “stock up on everything, period”, and I am doing just that, including bacon and sausage of all kinds and flavors. Jams, jellies, ice cream.
I will have to demo how to make a turtle sundae before ice cream disappears again.
For those who like to cook under pressure:
Sausage Gravy
Ingredients
1 pound breakfast sausage
2 TB butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
½ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ cup flour
2 cups beef broth
1 cup whole milk
Instructions
Turn the Instant Pot to saute. Brown the sausage, stirring frequently to keep it from sticking.
When the meat is browned add butter, salt, pepper, garlic powder and flour. Stir until the flour is absorbed. Add 2 cups of beef broth to the Instant Pot. Scrap the bottom of the pot to deglaze the bottom.
Next pour in milk. Stir until well combined. Place the lid on the Instant Pot and set it to manual cook on LOW pressure 2 minutes. Let the Instant Pot release naturally for 2 minutes and then do a quick release of remaining pressure.Stir the gravy. Gravy will thicken as it stands.
Serve over biscuits
I wondered when you’d show up. Thanks!!!
I have decided on a smallish Nescon countertop roaster, because turkey time will be coming up and I only want turkey for one. Well, yeah, turkey legs for the Punkster, too, but….
You’re welcome.
As much as I like contributing to this thread, sometimes I think you and AW1Ed try to think of things that can’t be done well in a pressure cooker. (Mostly baked goods.)
(And I say that jokingly, of course.)
The image accompanying this post led me down the road of “AH HA!!! I can contribute to a baking post!” 🙂
The Nesco sounds nice. A while back I bought an Instant Omni Plus toaster oven.
(With the success I have had with my Instant Pot, and needing a toaster oven, I went with the brand Instant over Ninja, the Emeril, brand, etc.)
This thing is as awesome as the pressure cooker. It roasts and bakes, but also air fries. My cooking time is way down using this thing which in the summer in Florida is a huge plus. It has a rotisserie that I have made 5 lb chickens, and can also act as a dehumidifier for jerky, or fruits. (Air fried chicken with Nando’s Peri Peri sauce has been a revelation!)
So between the two – the pot and the oven – I can go from slow cooking in a crock pot to pressure cooking to rapid cooking by heat.
I am definitely a happy camper.
If you like your Nesco 50% as much as I like my two kitchen gadgets, you are going to be thrilled.
It just opens up all new types and ways to cook things and flavors to cook with.
Thanks for posting something I could contribute to!
(I still think you and AW1Ed converse and say “how can we stop him….?”)
heh heh heh
It’s not so much about baking as it is about using the oven for things like roasting. The Nesco countertop roaster is a stand-alone countertop oven, with a thermostat, which means that you control the temperature as well as the time.
My Aunt Jane could roast a whole goose in her Nesco “cooker”, which is a good thing to know if you have a bad back and can’t do the bend to open an oven door. She could also bake biscuits in it. That really takes me back, too, because I always wondered how that worked.
On the other hand, you should be able to make a really good dish of stuffing with your pressure cooker, and unless things have changed a lot, you might be able to cook a meatloaf in it.
If you want, I’ll dig up the stuffed meatloaf recipe I have tucked away somewhere and post it, so that you can give it a try.
I appreciate the thought, but my mom used to make a meatloaf that had onions and green peppers, was surrounded on all sides with bacon, and a round of gouda cheese in the middle. The top was covered with bacon, more cheese and tomato sauce. Halfway through the cooking, you add a layer of breadcrumbs (she used regular, I use panko) or a layer of French’s French fried onions (like those used in green bean casseroles.)
The meat has all the standard stuff in it, but I have been adding some Nando’s Peri Peri sauce to it which brightens the flavor and gives a tiny kick.
It’s cooked in a round casserole dish, so I guess that technically it is not a loaf, but I never complained.
Everything melts together and when you cut into it, the gouda flows out, the bacon grease has gotten into the meat and it is one boiling, bubbly mass of goodness.
(I usually partially cook the bacon before hand as it comes out crisper in the the meatloaf.)
It was one of the first things I cooked when I got the Instant Omni Plus, and it was like being 10 years old again.
Food is often just as much about memories as it is the taste.
This one is both for me.