I grew up loving homemade biscuits. On the days my dad would cook (he’s the biscuit chef in my parents home) we would all get excited because we knew he was either going to make scones, or bread, or biscuits! These yummy, flaky treats were more often part of a dinner meal here in the South, rather than part of breakfast, like you might expect. I always thought families that had dinner rolls were weird, as we NEVER ate rolls with our meals! I started helping my dad with the baking as a teenager and my grandma helped me perfect the art as I got older. Now she lives with me, so I make biscuits much more often than I used to, because she loves them.
We eat these in a variety of ways, sometimes for breakfast- smothered with sausage gravy or slathered with Homemade Strawberry Jam. But we also make them to go with a Ham for Dinner, or just make the dough and roll it out and stuff it with chicken for chicken biscuits. Or I make the dough and drop it on top of my chicken pot pie. Any recipe that you might find biscuit dough, you can replace it with this instead of the typical “open a can of biscuits”. Don’t like all the shortening in the recipe? Trust me, its better than what they are putting in the canned stuff. You can always sub butter for the shortening- your biscuits will taste different, but be delicious all the same!
Our most recent favorite variation is to add 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 cup of berries to the dough and have Berry Biscuits- with a touch of glaze for good measure. We get something similar at Bojangles here in the south- Bo-Berry Biscuits. This is pretty darn close! I’ll include that variation below!
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Southern Biscuits
4 cups self rising flour
5 TBSP shortening or butter
2 Cups Buttermilk
some extra flour for patting out the biscuits
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees
Grease up your pan (I like to use cast-iron)
1- Drop the shortening into the flour
2 and 3- Cut your Shortening into your flour. There are a variety of methods for doing this, but I just use the side of a fork and cut it up into little tiny pieces, then use the flat of the fork to smash the pieces against the side of the bowl until you don’t have more large chunks.
4-As you stir through the flour you shouldn’t have any pieces larger than a pea.
5- Now add in your buttermilk a little at a time until you have all the flour wet and very sticky, you may need a bit less or more depending on the day 🙂 Do not over mix, you want your tiny pieces of shortening to stay as intact as possible- (thats what makes them flaky)
6-Now just flour your counter and dump out your mix onto the counter sprinkle enough flour on the top that you can pat it out till its about 1 1/2 inches thick.
7- I use a mason jar at this point to cut out my biscuits and place them onto my cast-iron pan coated with oil. Don’t have a cast-iron pan? That’s okay, just double up a couple of cookie sheets and use that instead.
8-Place your biscuits in the oven for about 10-12 minutes or until they are lightly browned on the top. Serve warm and Enjoy! We love these with a basic white gravy cooked with sausage, or just with Strawberry Jam.
Serve and enjoy! Makes about 12 biscuits.
Berry Biscuits Variation
5- Add 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 cup of berries thawed if they were frozen (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries…whatever you have or a combo of all of them)
Add the berries to the dry mix, and then add your buttermilk. If your berries are juicy you won’t need to add quite as much buttermilk, so keep an eye on that. A word of warning, your dough is going to change to pinky/purple! Its so good though, you won’t care. (And if you have daughters they will love it!)
Garlic Cheese Variation
If you love the delicious cheesy biscuits at red lobster, but don’t love the over priced bill, try adding a cup of shredded extra sharp cheddar to the dry mix. Then add your buttermilk and some garlic salt to taste. Then when your biscuits are first beginning to brown brush some butter mixed with garlic salt and a dash of italian seasoning on the tops and put back in the oven to finish cooking.
SO YUMMY!
