(photo by JeffreyW at Whats4dinnersolutions)
From our Food Goddess, Tamara:
I’ve been making a lot of biscuits in the last few weeks, no particular reason, it just seemed to be the perfect addition to several meals. A while back, JeffreyW posted the photo above and I commented that my biscuits were never quite that fluffy. He promptly pointed me to the recipe he used. I’ve used a variation of it ever since. These are by far the best biscuits ever and I can’t believe how easy they are to make, and they come out great every time.
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I have plenty of biscuit variations, too: Cinnamon Biscuits, Cheddar Cheesy Biscuits and Whole Wheat Biscuits.
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Heavenly Biscuits
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Big, fluffy and moist, they easily compete with any biscuit I’ve had, even at my favorite restaurant Lucille’s. I bake them in my large cast iron skillet.
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2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/3 cup butter (this really gives them a buttery flavor), softened, really, really softened
1 cup buttermilk – (I use 4 tbsp buttermilk powder to 1 cup water)
mixing bowl, baking sheet or cast iron skillet
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In mixing bowl whisk together dry ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Gradually add milk. Mix together until dough pulls away from sides of the bowl. I had to add additional flour, this is a very moist dough. Turn out onto well floured surface and knead 10-15 times. I couldn’t roll this dough out it was too moist. I just flattened it by hand (about an inch thick, maybe a little less) and cut out the biscuits. With the extra flour I came up with 7 very large biscuits.
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Bake at 425 degrees for 13-15 minutes, until golden brown. Put your oven rack in the middle to keep them from browning too much on the bottom. ====
Biscuits or rolls? Do you have a favorite and what’s your favorite topping? Butter, honey, apple butter?Next Week: Unusual fruits
BGinCHI
I can’t wait until next week’s installment, on Liberace I assume.
lamh35
Is this thread only for recipes, cause I kinda been waiting on a new open thread because I wanted to tell the people who gave me some advice on Monday about the new job I applied for thank you and give them an update if anyone cares that is…lol.
So they called me on Tuesday and scheduled a phone “pre-interview” with the recruiter on Wednesday.
So yesterday, I had the interview with the recruiter, the call lasted about 22 minutes here are the topics we discussed.
1. how did you hear about the job/why did you choose…/why are you comtemplating leaving DFW.
2. what would you consider your best assets/where do you think you could improve
3. when/how did/would you handle a situation where: you had a disagreement with your super or mgr/ you had a disagreement with co-worker/had to help a doctor, nurse, patient with a problem that arose in the lab.
4. She asked about my certifications and my education, my licensure, my eligibilty to work in US, proof of citizenship, etc.
Her last question was if I had any minimum pay requirments and if ya’ll remember, I explained to her about wanting to make the same as I do in DFW or as close possible to what I make, but obviously only if there was an offer made.
she asked aobut my references, I told her I provided the requested 5 [(2 mgr: my lab manager when I was a student who is still a Lab Mgr, and my PRN lab mgr who was extremely happy to to a rec; my 3 other ref were from 1 current and 2 former co-worker who I am on great terms with (good friends actually).] I told her that I would be happy to provide ref from my current mgrs only if I am offered the position.
She asked me if I had any questions, and since pay was my biggest and she brought that up, I asked her when the position needed to be filled (she wasn’t sure, she just had basic info on the position, and had to confer with lab mgr for further info) and I asked her how long before I’d hear anything else. She said that she would forward my info to the lab management along with my answers and my minmum requirements and then from there the lab management would be contacting her if they wanted to take my application furthet.
she also mentioned that she “did not have a long applicant pool” for the position, but I couldnt’ understand if that meant that they would be looking for a larger pool or not and I’m not sure if not having a “long applicant pool” is a good thing or bad thing.
So all in all, IMHO the interview went pretty well. I think I did pretty good and she seemed to be engaged and not bored or skeptical of my answers.
So wish me luck and give me good vibes that everything falls into place and that the pay scale falls into place and that I am the best candidate for the job.
I’d like to thank everyone for their advice in the last 2 days too.
:-)
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: Sniff. You could just admit you don’t love me no more. :)
This is too close to baking for my cook’s blood. But I’ll post my cannellini bean puree recipe when I get home from work.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh35: Best of luck. Or break a leg. Or whatever the appropriate phrase is. You know what I mean.
Gus
Buttermilk powder? My first reaction was yuck, but the more I think about it, the more brilliant I think it is. Every time I make something with buttermilk I wind up dumping 3/4 of the carton. I’d be astonished if you could tell the difference in a recipe like this.
jl
What, no gravy?
But, thanks anyway, look delicious.
For biscuits, recipe looks pretty healthy. If you can not damn near eat the whole batch, which is exactly what I do.
Any good recipes for whole wheat biscuits?
Litlebritdifrnt
“We’re really angry about what’s going on in Washington. We all balance budgets. We all know how to cut spending in our own personal lives, and we’re so frustrated with government, and so frustrated with the debt they’re going to leave our children.”
A quote from Ann Romney. The woman has never balanced a damn budget nor cut spending in her own personal life in her entire life. Why do people allow people to just out and out lie on the campaign trail?
abo gato
The basis of the recipe we’ve been using the past few years is here:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/biscuits-recipe
They are tender, flaky, and just amazingly good. Some of the changes we’ve made have been using buttermilk instead of cream; adding an egg to the buttermilk; brushing the tops with cream before baking instead of the butter…pretty much whatever has been done with this seems to work out just fine.
abo gato
The basis of the recipe we’ve been using the past few years is here:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/biscuits-recipe
They are tender, flaky, and just amazingly good. Some of the changes we’ve made have been using buttermilk instead of cream; adding an egg to the buttermilk; brushing the tops with cream before baking instead of the butter…pretty much whatever has been done with this seems to work out just fine.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: He lived and worked in my home town for a while in the 50s.
Capri
@lamh35:
Good luck.
I’m on the search committee for a tech position at the hospital where I work. It sounds like the place you are applying to is working about the same way we do. The positions we have can be either way lower or higher than other places that hire folks with similar backgrounds – so asking the expected salary range saves a lot of time.
If our job pays a max of 40,000 a year, and the candidate will take no less than 60,000 might as well stop there.
jl
Oops, did not read the post carefully enough. There they are in the last link. Wholewheat biscuits. Thanks.
JPL
@Gus: Buttermilk used to waste in my fridge also,so I started freezing the leftovers in one cup containers.
Southern Beale
That looks awesome.
I need a good shortbread recipe. It’s strawberry season in Tennessee and the last batch of shortbread I made was like gravel.
Veritas
No gravy?
Biscuits just aren’t biscuits without heaps of gravy on them, with some sausage on the side…mmmm mmm mmmmmm.
Omnes Omnibus
@Veritas: Have a biscuit.
TaMara (BHF)
@Gus: I love buttermilk powder , it keeps forever and I think offers a better flavor overall.
Veritas
The best fast food biscuits are of course from Hardee’s. Mmmm
Linkmeister
@Gus: I use buttermilk powder for bread with no appreciable difference between that and the liquid. Like you, I was ending up throwing out the balance of the carton, because the smallest I can buy is a pint, and there’s not a recipe in my bread machine book which calls for that much.
The first “jam” I made in my bread machine was apple butter. Dried apples chopped/minced in the food processor worked very well. (The first batch they weren’t chopped enough, so I used that for ice cream topping. It was delicious.)
Schlemizel
I have never been a fan of biscuits, don’t know why, just never cared for them. Breads are another thing I can’t eat any more so I guess I won’t get to try this recipe.
I used to like corn muffins with stews and chili & worked on this recipe till it was pretty good.
1/2 C flour
1 1/2 C yellow cornmeal
1/4 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 C sour cream
2 lg eggs
1/4 C butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 C corn kernels
1 bunch green onions, chopped into 1/4 inch slices
Combine first 7 ingredients in large bowl. In another bowl, mix sour cream, eggs and melted butter. Add sour cream mixture to dry ingredients and stir until just moistened (do not overmix). Fold in corn kernels and green onions.
Anyway pour the mixture into a greased 9 inch cake pan & bake at 425 for 20-22 minutes – till toothpick comes out clean. You could also put it into muffin tins in which case it would take 5-10 minutes less to bake I guess.
I like to do this when I can scrape fresh corn off the cob but thawed frozen is easier to get. I also toss in a medium jalapeno pepper copped fine if I want to make it a bit hotter & tastier.
JGabriel
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Tamara:
Homophobe.
.
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
Fake. You’re not sobbing and screaming about the UNLIMITED KOCH DOLLARS.
TaMara (BHF)
@lamh35: Yay! Good thoughts, good thoughts…
Francis
Lucille’s? The SoCal mini-chain? I live walking distance to the one in Long Beach (which is a partial explanation as to why I could really use to lose about 15 lbs). Oh those biscuits are good when I work late and stop there for a bowl of gumbo on the way home.
lamh35
Axelrod to CNN: Rosen is ‘your employee, not ours’
General Stuck
It’s Charlie Time
WARNING
Cute Factor – HIGH
JGabriel
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Veritas:
Whatever the disposition of the First Lady’s anatomy, at least her ass isn’t posting on the web like you, Romney’s Ass.
.
lamh35
@Capri: so do you think that her not a “long applicant pool” is a good or bad indicator for whether or not they might meet my pay expectations?
I literally applied for the job online less than 2 weeks before they emailed asking for references and before they called an setup the phone interview.
In the back of my mind I think why would they be looking at someone who does not live in the city unless I was a top candidate???
elmo
Easy solution for excess buttermilk: dredge chicken in buttermilk, then in your seasoned breading, then AGAIN in buttermilk and AGAIN in your seasoned breading, and deep-fry.
psycholinguist
Those are really pretty, but the recipe is breaking the first and greatest law of biscuit makin, at least the “southern strategy” method of biscuit makin. I was taught from infancy two things about biscuits 1) because they consist primarily of two ingredients, flour and fat, that a biscuits flavor will be derived primarily from the type of fat – hence, a Popeye’s biscuit tastes so great because the fat is lard, you get a biscuit that tastes kind of deep fried and bbq’d. Butter is great, they taste like butter, and who can complain about that, and this is why if you see somebody break out the can of Crisco or Bisquick to make biscuits, you run for the hills, cause that is gonna taste like hydrogenated fluff.
Now the second rule, and this is the one you appear to be breaking – always, always have your fat as cold as you can, and keep it that way. I’ve seen biscuit makers actually mix the dough in a pan within a pan, with ice being in the outer pan to keep things from melting. I was taught to use only the tips of my fingers when kneading the dough so to keep it cold. The argument is that this leaves the butter in a solid state of little clumps, distributed throughout the dough, rather than melted and soaked into the flour. When you put that into a red-hot oven (as hot as the oven can stand) the butter melts in a flash, and forms a layer at that point, so that your biscuits end up with these fantastic paper thin layers of dough, rather than a soft, spongy mass of bread. Tradition is also to roll them out rather thin, so that the ratio of crisp crust to softer body is kept at max. You want the soft butter or bacon fat for the roux you are making with equal parts flour and fat that will be the base of your sausage gravy.
The other thing about southern biscuits – they are kind of a guy thing, at least on Saturday mornings – daddy is supposed to be the one up making the biscuits and gravy.
Warren Terra
Surely the recipe this week really ought to be for Matzoh Pizza, not for Chametz?
PS One of the top hits at that Google search is from frigging Martha Stewart. That just seems wrong somehow.
shortstop
Mmmm, biskits.
BG, are you still around, because I need to bitch. @#((*$()@#&% city towed our car from a totes legal spot and the third baseman is over at the city auto pound forking over $160, which he has to attend a hearing IN PERSON, during BUSINESS HOURS, to try to get back. W#&($)&#@)$&(@#%&)(@#&%!!!!
poco
@lamh35: Keeping all digits crossed for you. Best of luck!!
Mino
I’ve been trying out various hummus mixtures. Finding beans and seasoning that work together. I use a basic hummus recipe for 2 cups and experiment.
Black beans with cumin, kalamata olives, feta and a splash of balsamic. You won’t credit how good this is.
Butter beans with dried and fresh basil, lemon zest and juice.
Navy beans with ground rosemary and white balsamic.
I’m working on one using mung beans. Any suggestions?
TaMara (BHF)
@psycholinguist: I’m wondering if it’s an altitude thing, but for me, cold butter makes for tough biscuits. Which could also be a cook issue, I’d gladly admit. I bow to your wisdom and say to everyone else, use cold butter.
@elmo: Also, you can soak chicken in buttermilk for 30 minutes before all the dredging for extra moist fried chicken.
Svensker
Heavenly Biscuits usually have yeast in them, I thought. BP AND yeast, and you don’t let them rise, but the yeast gives them extra lightness and a nice flavor. Course, I’m all for regular un-yeasty biscuits, too. Any kind of biscuit’s good by me.
Now about Crisco and running for the hills: my mom made Crisco biscuits but she had a hand for pastry and biscuits. They would come out so light and flaky they’d fairly float away. And you’d get the butter flavor by putting a ton of butter on top of the fresh hot biscuit, so that worked out OK, too. Dang, she could make good biscuits and pie dough. Her hands were always cold and I think that was her trick.
Svensker
@Mino:
Use chick peas like God intended and all will be well. :)
Mino
@Svensker: Oh, that’s a staple in the fridge. But I likes a little variation.
slag
@JGabriel: MO is a lovely and obviously quite fit person. It’s quite likely that she could easily kick Veritas’ ass.
Also, mmmmmm biscuits. Bookmarking this one.
Just Some Fuckhead
I make biscuits from scratch, which I’m sure I’ve talked about before. I’m partial to buttermilk biscuits.
Throw on some sausage gravy and welcome to Flavor Country.
mainmati
@Gus: Because buttermilk is low fat, there are a lot of applications for the liquid version; the version only works in baking recipes and even then you have to be a little careful.
currants
@Gus: YES! My thought process exactly.
currants
@Southern Beale: Danish Shortbread (AKA Finnish Bread in Denmark)
300 gr. flour
200 gr butter
100 gr. sugar
for decoration egg and pearl sugar
Cut the butter into the flour and work it together so that is is slightly assembled, add the sugar and then work the dough into a ball. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Roll portions into strings with the diameter of a fat finger. Cut into blocks of about 1 ½ inches and flatten. Brush with a beaten egg (which I omitted) and then press into the pearl sugar. Bake for 10 minutes at 400º or until light brown.
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: I have never made sausage gravy. Got a good recipe?
Omnes Omnibus
@shortstop: Lincoln Park Pirates?
jeffreyw
It’s all about the gravy.
joel hanes
@Schlemizel:
(corn muffin recipe)
looks really really good
If you have a place to get it, you can replace about half that sour cream with cold-pressed corn oil
Just Some Fuckhead
@TaMara (BHF): I don’t work from recipes. Use sausage, flour, lots of pepper, a little bit of coffee and some crushed red pepper flakes. Salt to taste. If I’m making it for the kids, I add a little sugar.
elmo
@TaMara (BHF):
I can’t claim to have a good recipe, but I think most sausage gravy depends heavily on the sausage itself for its flavor. We use one chub of Jimmy Dean regular and one of hot.
Brown the sausage well. Drain some of the grease, but by no means all – this is a Southern recipe! Remove the sausage from teh pan.
While the pan is hot, begin to sprinkle flour onto the sausage bits and brown goodness left in the pan. Stir well to make a roux. Then add milk or half-and-half to the desired consistency. Season with salt and lots of black pepper. Put the sausage back in and let it all simmer together for a bit to thicken.
And then eat it all standing up before your family gets to the kitchen. It’s that good.
jeffreyw
@Southern Beale: Here’s a link to a recipe I found online that worked pretty well.
elmo
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Coffee??? Do tell! Do you mean grounds or actual made coffee? you add it to the gravy? For serious?
If this works, my partner will LOVE it.
shortstop
@elmo: Yeah, (liquid) coffee’s good in snausage gravy. Try it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@elmo: Brewed coffee.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: Coffee? Seriously?
ETA: Already answered.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, milk too. I forgot that one.
presque vu
Can’t say I have a family recipe to share, if I did I suspect it would go like my great aunt Grace’s dumpling recipe — no measurements.
One interesting thing I read along the lines was that the regional flour mills typically produce flour good for bread (in the North) or good for biscuits (in the South). Recently read that here in St. Louis was the largest flour production in the US. If the millers were mostly German like the brewers, maybe we’re more of a bread than biscuit region.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: I always have milk (or half & half) with my coffee, so I would have gotten in there anyway.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: Heh.
shortstop
@Just Some Fuckhead: It was implied.
I can’t stop staring slack-jawed at these beautiful biscuits. I need to go make dinner before my husband gets home all crankyass from the car pound. Gorgonzola/spinach/mushroom/garlic/onion calzones!
Birthmarker
whole wheat biscuits
I’ve never made the herb biscuit variation. You can adjust the amount of white vs. whole wheat flour. I usually go half and half.
BTW the recipe says it is from Derf!!
I’ve never made biscuits with softened butter. I am going to try it.
Just Some Fuckhead
Jeffreyw is making me jealous with his food pr0n. I checked my flickr page and this is the only thing I could find good to eat.
Jay S
@Gus: Mark Bittman suggests that you can substitute yogurt for buttermilk in biscuits. I haven’t tried that yet, but probably will since buttermilk tends to suffer the same fate in our refrigerator, besides not being there unless we plan ahead.
I used to have powdered buttermilk for bread making, but I used it so rarely that it would end up caking.
This recipe doesn’t call for baking soda? Most call for a little (1/4 t) and Bittman calls for a lot (1 t). My wife claims to taste the soda at the levels that Bittman calls for. I have wondered if it was really necessary in such small quantities but have never skipped it.
Birthmarker
oh well. On the I pad it looks like the link trashed.
It was from all recipes.com
TaMara (BHF)
@Southern Beale: I didn’t see that request. If Jeffrey’s link doesn’t look like it will work, here’s the one I use all the time.
Shortbread
Birthmarker
I can taste the smallest amount of baking soda in biscuits. It tastes unpleasantly beefy.
TaMara (BHF)
@Schlemizel: I look forward to trying this. I don’t really have a favorite cornbread recipe handy.
Southern Beale
@currants:
Thanks, my fault I meant shortCAKE not shortbread … woops my mistake!
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: And cooking girl learns something new…
EDIT: Is that fer reals you??
Southern Beale
@jeffreyw:
Thanks! I’ve bookmarked it, will give it a try…..
TaMara (BHF)
@shortstop: That sounds awesome.
Birthmarker
@elmo: My Dad would pull a glass out of the cabinet and fill it with half milk and half water. Other than that, this is how we made gravy. We only let a couple of tablespoons of grease stay in the pan.
Just Some Fuckhead
@TaMara (BHF): Yep, that’s for realz me.
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: Any comment I could make has been censored. ;-)
The Fat Kate Middleton
@lamh35: Please, please do not ever seduce me into clicking on to Politico again. I thought I had some idea of how awful it is over there, but I really didn’t. Gonna go take a shower now.
Yutsano
@shortstop: U give recipe naow!! :)
psycholinguist
@TaMara (BHF):
I would bet it is more likely to be the flour, if you are out west (hard red vs soft, most flours are processed regionally) or it could be an overworking of the dough – with quick breads like biscuits you want to do the minimal kneading possible, the more gluten that is developed, the tougher the biscuit. Think opposite of everything that makes good yeast bread, and you got biscuit technique.
Debbie(Aussie)
You do realize that these definitely are not biscuits but scones, you Americans ;)
Ben W
I’ve used Bittman’s buttermilk biscuit recipie from How to Cook Everything for a long time. I use his substitute of plain yogurt for the b-milk. He keeps the butter cold by chopping it into chunks throughout the flour and he does use a lot of baking soda. Still they are delicious.
asiangrrlMN
I want these IN MAH BELLEH NAOW!
J.W. Hamner
A couple of months ago I made Sausage Gravy and Buttermilk Biscuits… both recipes off of GiltTase ( here and here). The biscuit recipe is almost identical to what’s posted here (more butter), but what’s nice about it is that it explains how biscuits work and what effect changing ingredients will have. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I bake by weight and it includes none… so eventually I’ll have to work out my own proportions.
The sausage gravy is sausage gravy… I liked it a lot.
Svensker
@Debbie(Aussie):
They are scone-like but not at all scones, just the same family. As for your what you call “biscuits”, I say you’ve lost your cookies.
Capri
@lamh35:
I don’t think they have anything to do with each other. The salaries are fixed and not too flexible in regards supply and demand.
Suezboo
We SAfricans are with the Aussies on the vexed question of what is a biscuit? These things are scones, for sure.
Cookies=little cakes in Dutch; however, thanks to the ubiquity of American culture/ignorance on the matter, I admit to Chocolate chip cookie being acceptable.
Do not get us started on jelly vs jam.