Mamaw Moran's Biscuits and Gravy

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Molly O'Neill is our Food Editor. She is the former food columnist for The New York Times Magazine. O'Neill is the author of three cookbooks, including the best-selling New York Cookbook (Workman Publishing, 1992), A Well Seasoned Appetite (Penguin, 1997), and The Pleasure of Your Company (Viking, 1997). She was the host of the PBS series Great Food, and edited the critically acclaimed anthology American Food Writing (Library of America, 2007). Her latest work, Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball (Scribner, 2006), recounts her childhood of growing up in a Major-League baseball family.

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by Molly O'Neill

“Our grandmother was a remarkable woman,” says Max Moran’s sister, Elaine Bartley. “I don’t think there was ever a day that she did not make biscuits and gravy. It was the mainstay of their household in that little coal-mining town in south eastern Kentucky. It makes a fine breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. It's rich for us today. I only make it a few times a year, but Mamaw Moran lived to be 96 years old. How bad could it be?”

One pound of bacon, sliced thick
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 quarts milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. In a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon, remove from the pan and set aside. Whisking constantly, add the white flour to the pan and reduce the heat to low and continue whisking until the flour browns to a nut color, about 5 minutes.

2. Still whisking, add the milk. Add the salt and pepper and keep stirring until the gravy is thick, about 10 minutes. The bacon can be crumbled in the gravy, served on the side or saved for another meal. Serve over biscuits.

Serves 4.