Hi! I’ve been looking for a good biscuit recipe. The kind that would go with dinner, with butter or gravy. Lately, I have used jiffy mix ‘cause I have it on hand, but they taste kind of bland and heavy with soda powder/baking powder taste. Yuck. If you run across or try biscuit recipe please let me know. NO hurry.
Thanks for your time and help!
-Georgia
Well Georgia, we aim to please! It just so happens we had plans to make some baked chicken for dinner Sunday night and what goes better with chicken than biscuits, right? Well, Kevin certainly thought so and since he was heading to the store on Saturday afternoon, while I was still recovering from the flu, he got all the ingredients we needed. I somewhat figured that what Georgia wanted was an quick, recipe that could be easily made for a group of people or just one if needed. Something that didn’t require a whole pantry of ingredients. I was Google’ing around and found a Youtube video of an old southern grandmother making biscuits. I thought it was totally endearing (not to mention super important!) that someone had the forethought to video tape their grandmother making a recipe that they are famous in the family for. So often our relatives pass away, leaving a huge void in our hearts, but in our stomachs as well and somehow we never know exactly how they made that meatloaf, that casserole or those cookies. Anyway, when I watched this little old lady making these biscuits I was so eager to try them, she made it look completely effortless – and come to find out – it was!
Kevin was not sold on the recipe I had written down from the video I had watched. He thought maybe there were ingredients missing, or something, but I could just tell he was not happy about making these biscuits in the fashion in which I had gotten from this video. And listen – I understand! When you’ve made food before from your own recipe or in school, or maybe your mom taught you – you kind of just want to do it that way forever. I get it. But what Kevin doesn’t understand is that, I have never made biscuits from scratch before – therefore I have nothing to lose and everything to gain! I don’t have that dreaded fear of trying something other than what I have always known a biscuit recipe to be. It simply doesn’t bother me. So anyway, getting back to dinner time.. the chicken was seasoned and baked and resting and before I knew what was happening Kevin was pouring flour into a bowl and adding things with a grimace on his face. He didn’t look very happy. When I realized that he was starting the biscuits without me, I hopped up with my phone to take pictures. See originally the plan was, I was going to bake the chicken and he was going to do the biscuits. However, I was taking a much needed hopefully-post-flu marathon nap and he offered to season the chicken for me. From there, he just took over. But I was expecting then that I would do the biscuits! Well, anyway, things weren’t looking good in the bowl and Kevin was looking peeved. The thing is, he hadn’t watched the video so my little list of ingredients and what to do didn't mean anything to him and he seemed annoyed. So I took over. Now this is what you’ll need for these insanely simple, easy biscuits:
-Self rising Flour (recipe calls for 8 cups but we only used 4).
-Crisco (shortening)
-Buttermilk (recipe calls for 1 Cup, we used a little more than 1/2 Cup).
Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
-Sift your flour – if you don’t have a sifter (and don’t worry - we don’t either) just mixed through it well with your hands, try to work out most of the lumps.
-Use the shortening or Crisco to grease a cookie sheet
-Make yourself a well in the center of the bowl of flour – this is where your dough will form. Use a good handful of Crisco to and start to slowly massage into flour
-Then add your 1 C of butter milk slowly, about 1/4 cup at a time mixing it with the flour and the shortening. Be sure to add flour bit by bit and mixing with hands until you’ve got desired amount of dough. Careful not to mush the dough around too much, or you will over work it. When the dough firms a bit, you can make it into biscuits (whatever size you desire – they do rise a little bit).
Drop biscuits onto sheet. If you like a more tender biscuit, keep them very close together, even touching, on the sheet. For a biscuit that is brown and somewhat crispy on all sides, keep them separate on the sheet.
Lightly press knuckles into top of each biscuit.
Bake for 18-22 minutes – depending on your oven and the size of biscuits.
Next time I fully plan to added some garlic & sharp cheddar cheese into these babies – delicious! Hope you enjoy as much as we did!
xoxo
Aimee & Kevin Ellis
p.s. This is the video that I watched to learn to make these – I wish I had thought of video taping my grandmother making all of her delicious recipes! I highly recommend watching the video before making the biscuits so you can see what I mean about ‘overworking’ the dough – she just does some squishing, but she doesn’t touch it a whole lot – which is apparently very important when it comes to biscuit making!
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