OT: real biscuits

Whistle
1

Background: I grew up with the occassional treat of my mom making homemade biscuits. Not comes-in-a-can biscuits, but honest-to-God “cat head” biscuits, made to keep a hard worker on his feet through a long morning. Note that they call 'em that because they are about the size of a cat’s head, not in reference to any ingredients!

Until today, it had been years since I’d eaten any homemade biscuits…but I finally got the recipe from my mom, and tried it–and actually made some pretty good biscuits.

So I thought I’d share the recipe here, and invite any and all who still make real homemade biscuits to post their recipe here as well. This is in the same form as my mom gave it to me.

  1. Preheat oven. For a gas oven, try 375 degrees; for electric, try 400.

  2. In a large bowl sift flour until the bowl is about 1/3 full. Take the back of your fingers and make a “hollow” in the center of the flour almost to the bottom of the bowl.

  3. In the hollow in the flour, add a little over 1 teaspoon salt, and a little over 1 tablespoon baking powder, and about 3 glops of vegetable shortning. Start working this into the flour until it gets to the consistency of cookie crumbs.

  4. Add 1 and 1/4 cup whole milk. Insert both hands into the mixture and start squooshing it up with your fingers until it starts to form a dough. Then punch and knead the dough until it seems to be about the right consistency for biscuit dough. It’s important to work the dough well at this point and make sure it is mixed up well. You’re going to have flour left over in the bowl; that’s ok. Don’t try to mix up all the flour into the dough, just add enough to get the right stiffness, which is just past the point where it stops sticking to your fingers.

  5. Take a well-seasoned iron skillet and melt a glop of shortning in it, turning the skillet to make sure the bottom and sides are coated. You want to get the skillet moderately hot but not to the point that the shortning smokes.

  6. Separate the dough into biscuits. You do this by pulling off a chuck, knead it into a sort of ball, and then flatten it out a bit. Being careful not to get burned, dip the biscuit into the hot skillet to get shortning on one side. Turn that side up and put the biscuit in the skillet. You should hear the biscuit start to fry on the bottom–that’s ok, that’s what it’s supposed to do. Do this for each biscuit until the skillet is full.

  7. Put the skillet in the oven and back for about 20 to 40 minutes–you want the tops to start turning a golden brown just on the tips.

  8. Carefully remove the skillet when the biscuits are done. It will be very very hot. Empty the biscuits into a plate. If you did it right, the biscuits will not stick to the skillet at all. Let the skillet cool completely before placing it in water or it could shatter!

  9. Enjoy! These are great with apple butter, or butter and grape jelly, and they are also durn good eatin’ served up with coffee gravy.

You can also roll the dough out onto a floured wax paper, put dollops of margarine around on it, cover them with sugar, and then sprinkle cinnamin over all. Add a winding ribbon of any kind of syrup, roll up, and cut into cinnamin rolls, and bake in a cake pan at 375 to 400 degrees until the tops are brown. Very good eating!!!

If anybody has favorite recipes for homemade biscuits, please share 'em here!

–James

2

My recipe?

Hardees

3

James: sorry, but I 'm a life long New Yorker. What’s coffee gravy?

4

:slight_smile:

No problem. It’s good stuff.

Assume you’ve just friend bacon or sausage, whatever your favorite breakfast meat might be. Pour most of the grease out of the skillet but leave a little bit. Add some flour, salt, and pepper, and brown the flour. Then add some hot coffee and cook it a bit till it starts to thicken. Pour into a bowl and serve over biscuits.

–James

5

:smiley: Oh so tasty and expiditous, they give shy person the courage to do what needs to be done..

Sorry I couldnt resist.

6

Coincidentally, I was looking for a good biscuit recipe for dinner, and abandoned that idea. Made popovers instead. Now I wish I’d seen this!

I did make a good stew tonight, though. It was off the top of my head but really tasty:

In a stock pot, fry up 1 lb ground beef, and drain the fat. Chop up the white part of 1 leek and saute it for a few minutes. Add 2 cans beef broth, celery seed, thyme, oregano, 1 bay leaf. Chop up 4 small red potatoes into eighths and add to the pot. De-stem 5-6 good-sized kale leaves, chop up and add to the pot. Cover and simmer until the potatoes are done. Remove from heat and grate in a couple tablespoons parmesan cheese and stir. Serve with parmesan-basil popovers!

Robin

7

You can tell they’re good by the grease strains on the bag. Let’s hear it for Norwegian bachelor farmers!

8

A favorite of mine (back when I used to cook more) was to take your basic biscuit recipe, substitute half the flour for rolled oats soaked in milk (one half the total liquid part of the recipe) until they’d softened. The end result wasn’t fluffy, but very tasty, and satisfying if you like oats.

9

This is a pretty good biscuit recipe that I often use, from the All New Joy of Cooking book:

Basic Rolled Biscuits

Postition a rack in the cener of the oven. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Have ready a large ungreased baking sheet.

Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Drop in:
5 to 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Cut in the butter with 2 knives or a pastry blender, tossing the pieces with the flour mixture to coat and separate them as you work. For biscuits with crunchy edges and a flaky, layered structure, continue to cut in the butter until the largest pieces are the size of peas and the rest resemble breadcrumbs. For classic fluffy biscuits, continue to cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Do not allow the butter to melt or form a paste with the flour.

Add all at once:
3/4 cup milk

Mix with a rubber spatula, wodden spoon, or fork just until most of the dry ingredients are moistened. With a lightly floured hand, gather the dough into a ball and knead it gently against the sides and bottom of the bowl 5 to 10 times, turning and pressing any loose pieces into the dough each time until they adhere and the bowl is fairly clean.

To shape round biscuits:
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface. With a lightly floured rolling pin or your fingers, roll out or pat the dough to 1/2 inch thick. Cut out 1 3/4 inch - to 2-inch rounds with a drinking glass or biscuit cutter dipped in flour; push the cutter straight down into the dough and pull it out without twisting for biscuits that will rise evenly. You can reroll the scraps and cut additional biscuits.

For browner tops, you can brush the biscuit tops with melted butter. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet at least 1 inch apart for biscuits with crusty sides or close togehter for biscuits that are joined and remain soft on the sides. Bake until the biscuits are golden brown on the top and a deeper golden brown on the bottom, 10 to 12 minutes. Serve hot.


This next isn’t a biscuit recipe but I found it on the internet last week and tried it. My daughter really wanted a chocolate cake and my husband and I aren’t big on lots of chocolate, so I found one that had chocolate in it but not too much that it was overwhelming. This cake is DELICIOUS!! My husband is allergic to corn so he can’t have most cake frostings (and I have to make 99% of our food from scratch, as almost everything [prepared foods from the store] has some form of corn in it)…this cake is delicious on its own and doesn’t need any frosting:

http://www.virtualcities.com/ons/co/b/cob18011.htm