Sausage Gravy and Biscuits, Camp Version
Bulk sausage, flour, and powdered milk in one skillet, poured over drop biscuits baked in the lid.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 24 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 40 min
- water
- 500 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Dutch oven
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Bulk breakfast sausage | 1 lb | the loose tube kind, kept cold in the cooler |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 1/4 cup | for the roux, on top of the biscuit flour |
| Powdered whole milk | 1/2 cup | reconstitutes to about 2 cups |
| Water | 2 cups | |
| Butter | 2 tbsp | only if the sausage runs lean |
| Black pepper | 1 tsp | more than you think |
| Salt | to taste | |
| Biscuit mix | 2 cups | self-rising mix that only needs water |
| Water for the biscuits | 2/3 cup |
Method
- Stir the biscuit mix with 2/3 cup water until it just holds together. Do not knead it. Drop six lumps into a greased dutch oven or a foil-lined lid.
- Bake with coals or a low flame, roughly 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are dry and the bottoms are brown. Pull them out and let them cool while you make the gravy.
- Brown the sausage in a skillet over medium-low, breaking it apart as it goes. It should render its own fat. Add the butter if the pan looks dry.
- Sprinkle the flour over the meat a spoonful at a time, stirring, until the fat is taken up and the mix looks like wet sand.
- Whisk the powdered milk into 2 cups of water in a bottle, then pour it in. Raise the heat and stir constantly, scraping the bottom, until it bubbles and thickens.
- Drop to a simmer, season with salt and a lot of pepper, and thin with a splash of water if it goes past pourable.
- Split the biscuits and flood them.
Camp gravy fails in one of two places: the roux or the milk. Adding flour a spoonful at a time until the rendered fat is fully absorbed is what keeps it from going grainy, and reconstituted powdered whole milk behaves close enough to the real thing that no cooler space gets spent on a carton. Mix the powder into water in a bottle first. Dumping dry powder into hot fat gives you lumps you cannot whisk out on a camp stove.
Biscuits go first because they need the oven hot and the gravy does not wait. A self-rising mix that takes only water skips the butter-cutting a home biscuit needs, and drop biscuits skip the rolling. The sausage is the one thing here that has to stay cold, which caps this at the first morning or two out of the cooler.
Packing
Powdered milk, flour, and seasoning go in one bag at home. The sausage is the only cooler item, so this is a day-one or day-two breakfast unless the ice is holding.
Variations
- Swap the sausage for two foil pouches of chicken plus 2 tbsp of oil to skip the cooler entirely.
- Freeze the sausage flat before the trip. It thaws by morning two and buys you a day.
https://www.huntingpa.com/threads/need-recipe-for-sausage-gravy.7881