Come in and try three varieties of biscuits and gravy with us!
By Marcy Harris
Two days of note are fast approaching. Tomorrow, December 14th, is National Biscuits and Gravy Day. We will be featuring two different styles of gravies on our breakfast menu to celebrate. The Blue Plate Eggs and Biscuits with Sawmill Gravy we typically offer on Mondays will be available. Called such because it originated in logging camps hundreds of years ago, we make this thick gravy with Nueske’s applewood-smoked bacon at the Roadhouse. We will also feature our famous sausage gravy, which we make with our amazing hand-ground Roadhouse sausage.
December 16th is National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, and we will also be celebrating biscuits and gravy that day. Ordinarily you would think that chocolate has nothing to do with gravy. But this is Zingerman’s, and if there is a way to connect chocolate with gravy, we are going to make it happen. And we did. We actually have a third type of biscuits and gravy on our brunch menu, one that is quite unique and amazing. It’s our buttermilk biscuits smothered with chocolate-bacon “gravy”. Yes, you heard me correctly.
Chocolate and bacon? It’s all gravy.
I’m not sure whom to credit with the discovery of eating chocolate and bacon together, but I do know that it is one of the most sensational flavor combinations that ever existed. I mean, everything tastes better with bacon, and everything tastes better with chocolate. Right? So it only makes sense that the two together would take us to a new height of flavor. The possibilities are endless: bacon dipped in chocolate; chocolate-bacon cupcakes; chocolate-bacon donuts; chocolate-bacon ice cream… Many people at this point might have tried them together in a chocolate bar (think Vosges Haut-Chocolate’s Mo’s Chocolate and Bacon bar, named after our very own Mo Frechette at Zingerman’s Mail Order). But ok, who came up with the idea of chocolate-bacon gravy?
From the mountains to our brunch menu.
Ari has the lowdown on the history of chocolate bacon gravy, explaining how it might have originated out of the Appalachians. Bacon fat was used as the base for many mountain dishes, including the milk gravy they made from scratch. When Hershey rolled out cocoa powder over 100 years ago, they made chocolate more accessible to Americans who might not otherwise have been able to try it. As a touch of luxury, it was added to the Appalachian milk gravy made from bacon fat. A star was born.
It’s really something quite simple. Milk, cocoa powder, and bacon. But in combination, these simple ingredients offer rich complexity. We use Askinosie chocolate powder and Nueske’s applewood-smoked bacon in our recipe, both of which take it up another flavor notch. It’s spoon-licking good on its own, but smothered over our buttermilk biscuits? It really doesn’t get any better than that. Sweet, salty, buttery and smoky all wrapped up in one? Yes please. It’s the perfect solution to one of those most challenging questions you can have at brunch. Sweet or savory? How about starting off your meal with both?
Now you are only stuck with the dilemma of what brunch drinks to order. You’re welcome!
Check out the rest of our brunch menu!