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This Drop Biscuits recipe that is always considered a treat at my house, met with the same zeal as a dessert even though it is just a bread.
Similar to Hoe Cake
A variation on my Mama’s hoe cake, she often mixed up the same batter and made drop biscuits instead. When I first served hoe cake to my in laws, hot from the oven with generous helpings of homemade apple butter, they declared it a hit. They loved the crispy outer layer and soft as clouds biscuit inside. But the next day when I made them drop biscuits with buttermilk and they assured me that the drop biscuits with apple butter were their new favorite.
Recipe Ingredients:
- Self rising flour
- Vegetable shortening (I like to use Coconut oil these days but use what you want)
- Buttermilk (you can use regular milk if you like)
- Some vegetable oil for the pan
Isn’t it amazing how all of the best Southern recipes have the fewest and most simple of ingredients?
Now take your ugliest baking sheet, one with a bit of a lip around the edges, and pour some vegetable oil on it.
You just need enough to coat the bottom.
Use Your Ugliest Baking Pan 🙂
You know that really ugly baking sheet you have that you make sure you don’t use when company comes? That is the one we want for this. Mine is so old and ugly I covered it in foil so you wouldn’t see! Bless it’s little heart, its a workhorse of a pan though! I normally do not cover my pan in foil so don’t feel that you have to.
Place that baking pan in your oven while it preheats to get the oil good and hot.
Measure your flour into a bowl.
Add your shortening.
Cut your shortening into the flour by repeatedly pressing down with a fork and stirring it up a bit as you do so.
Long Tined Fork Does Just Fine
I’ve mentioned before that you can buy a fancy pastry cutter for this but I find a long tined fork works just as well and I don’t have one more thing to keep up with. Simple is better here at Bountiful.
It’ll look like this when you are done.
Now pour in your buttermilk.
I used the very last bit of milk I had for these drop biscuits! Been so busy lately I haven’t had time to get groceries.
Stir it up until you have a batter that is just a little softer than regular biscuit batter.
It will be lumpy but that is perfectly fine so don’t go frettin’ over it.
Drop globs by large spoonful onto heated baking sheet.
The oil should be hot enough to sizzle a little bit when you add the batter.
How Do I Get The Tops Crunchy?
Tilt your pan a bit until some of the heated oil pools in the corner and spoon a bit of that oil over each biscuit.
This will get us nice and crunchy tops!
Here are our drop biscuits all ready to go.
These are pretty good sized ones and this recipe ended up making about eight of them.
If you make them a little smaller you could get a dozen.
Bake at 425 until golden brown, 10-15 minutes.
Drop Biscuits with Buttermilk
Serve warm with butter, jelly, or homemade apple butter! YUM!
Prep Time: 10 minutes minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes minutes
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: American
Keyword: biscuits
Calories: 191kcal
Ingredients
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1 cup buttermilk any milk will do
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening I used coconut oil but use what you like
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425. Pour a thin layer of oil to cover the bottom of a large baking pan and place in oven to heat.
Cut shortening into flour well. Pour buttermilk in and stir until wet – add a little more milk if needed.
Drop by large spoonfuls onto well heated pan and spoon a bit of hot oil over each one.
Bake for ten to fifteen minutes or until browned.
Nutrition
Calories: 191kcal
You may also enjoy these biscuit recipes:
Sausage Biscuit with Cheese Southern Style
Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe Light and Buttery
Pimento Cheese Biscuits
Garlic Cream Biscuits with Bacon Gravy
Happiness is like potato salad,
when shared with others – it becomes a picnic!
Submitted by Southern Plate reader, Kathi.
FAQs
Drop biscuits have more milk or other liquid added to the dough than rolled biscuits. The dough is moister and cannot be kneaded or rolled; simply drop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheet. Drop biscuits don't rise as much as other biscuits and they are always coarser in appearance and texture.
How do you keep drop biscuits from falling apart? ›
Fat aside, a common solution to crumbly biscuits is to cut back on the measured amount of dry ingredients. According to Quaker, you should be scooping flour gently with a spoon instead of sticking your measuring cup directly into the bag, which can lead to compacted mis-measurements.
What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›
Do not Overwork Biscuit Dough. Handle the dough as little as possible. Every time you touch, knead and fold, you are developing gluten. The more developed the gluten, the tougher the biscuit.
Why didn t my drop biscuits rise? ›
Be sure to keep that oven door closed! Opening your oven door during the baking process will let all that heat out. That rush of cold air that you let in can cause your biscuits to not rise as much. If you really want to keep an eye on your biscuits while they bake, turn the oven light on and peek from the outside.
Why are my drop biscuits flat? ›
If the fat melts or softens before the biscuits bake, the biscuits will be hard and flat because there's no place for the CO2 to go except out of the biscuits. Don't work in a hot kitchen. If the dough seems to be getting too soft or warm, place it in the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes.
Why are biscuits different in the South? ›
So, while biscuits were certainly baked in Northern kitchens, they didn't replace bread as the carbohydrate of choice. In the South, by contrast, the available flour was milled from low-protein soft wheat, which lacks the protein content necessary to make great bread but is the ideal flour for biscuits.
What is the best flour for biscuits? ›
There is some actual science behind why White Lily flour is lighter than others and, thus, better suited for items like biscuits and cakes.
Do you let biscuit dough rest? ›
Cover the dough loosely with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.
Why are my biscuits not light and fluffy? ›
For light and fluffy biscuits, steer clear of any flour made from 100% hard red wheat; this style is relatively low in starch and high in protein, readily forming gluten in a high-moisture dough. That's great when it comes to making chewy breads and pasta, but bad news for light and tender biscuits.
What kind of flour do Southerners use for biscuits? ›
White Lily brand flour, especially the self-rising flour, is the gold standard among Southern cooks who make biscuits on a regular basis. White lily, self rising. I use it for everything except those thing I make using either cake flour or yeast. If I'm using yeast I use King Arthur flours.
Pillai became known in India as the 'Biscuit King' or 'Biscuit Baron'. He took over Nabisco's other Asian subsidiaries. Pillai then established links with Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (BSN), the French food company, and by 1989 controlled six Asian companies worth over US$400 million.
Why are Southern biscuits better? ›
As explained by Reader's Digest, these biscuits are traditionally made with flour ground from soft wheat, a variety of grain that grows readily in the American South due to its warm, humid climates. This type of wheat has about half as much gluten as hard wheat — the type of wheat used in bread flour.
Is it better to use milk or buttermilk in biscuits? ›
Buttermilk can produce better results when baking biscuits than using regular milk or cream. Buttermilk is acidic and when it is combined with baking soda, it creates a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the dough to rise and gives the biscuits a light and flaky texture.
Should you chill biscuit dough before baking? ›
But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.
Which liquid makes the best biscuits? ›
Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.
Why are they called drop biscuits? ›
Drop biscuits get their name from how they are formed: By spooning the dough and "dropping" it onto the cooking surface, whether it be a baking sheet or straight onto a chicken pot pie. When baked on their own, they take less than 20 minutes in the oven.
What does dropping biscuits mean? ›
drop biscuit in American English
noun. a biscuit made by dropping baking powder biscuit dough from a spoon onto a pan for baking.
Is a drop away more accurate than a whisker biscuit? ›
While many bowhunters who only use drop-away rests tout their products' superior speed and accuracy, field tests have indicated the difference between Whisker Biscuits and drop-aways is minimal to negligible for most hunting scenarios, losing just a few feet per second and about an inch of drop at longer distances.
What are the 2 types of biscuit dough? ›
Soft dough biscuits as the name suggests are softer and fluffier than their hard dough counterparts. They have higher levels of fat & sweetness and are generally manufactured with the help of a rotary moulding machine.
