Family

The Art of Perfect Biscuits (It ain’t rocket science!)

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I came across a blog* recently that had a recipe for biscuits which led me to another* with a recipe for biscuits. Now, I’m not saying those recipes aren’t any good. I’m just saying my mama’s recipe is perfect!

Hah! … you say?

Well, I guess you’ll never know until you make all three recipes.  I’d start with this one …

Mama’s Perfect Biscuits

Ingredients:

3 heaping half-cups of self rising flour
1 over-loaded serving spoon of shortening
1 cup plus of buttermilk

About ingredients …

I use Martha White flour and Crisco shortening. I suppose you could use something else but don’t go blaming me if your biscuits don’t turn out as good as mine. I scoop it out with a half cup measuring cup. Just dig into the canister and pull out a big scoop. (If some falls off the scoop, don’t worry, you just didn’t need it yet.)

My granny used lard in her biscuits but somewhere along in the ’70s my mom nixed that and started using shortening. (It’s vegetable instead of animal fat so a lot less heart attack inducing in the long run.) Anyway, that’s why this is my mom’s biscuit recipe instead of my granny’s.

It’s hard to say exactly how much buttermilk you’ll need but it’s somewhere between a cup and a pint (usually, closer to the pint). You’ll get a better idea of how much to use in just a minute.

Directions:


Pre-heat oven to 500°.

Yes, 500! Not, 475, or 480, or 490, or even 495. It has to be 500 to make perfect biscuits.

Cream together the flour and shortening.

When this is done correctly, you end up with tiny little bits of what looks like flour on steroids. If it looks like Dippin’ Dots, you’ve gone too far with the shortening and need to add some flour.

I use a clear glass mixing bowl. My Granny used a wooden bowl that she never (and I mean never) washed. As far as I know nobody ever got food poisoning from Granny’s biscuits but I’d just as soon not take any chances. (BTW, except for the lard, this really is her recipe.) Sadly, the wooden bowl in the picture over there isn’t Granny’s biscuit bowl — one of my aunts has Granny’s bowl. I just lucked up one day and found this one, which is just like Granny’s, at a junk shop. Can’t imagine why anyone would ever let go of such a treasure.

Pour in some buttermilk and stir with spoon.

Start with about half a cup and work your way up from there. My mom and my granny both used their hands to do the mixin’ but, even though I’ve washed my hands first, I just can’t bring myself to do that so I use the spoon from the shortening. I mean why mess up another spoon?

Keep adding buttermilk and mixing it in until the biscuit dough becomes almost runny.

Almost runny means solid enough to hold together but liquid enough to dump out of the bowl pretty easy. It’s when the dough sort of starts slipping through your fingers if you try to pick it up out of the bowl. It’s kind of like the consistency of wet cement. Or, soft serve ice cream. (Okay, I can live with that image.) If it actually slips through your fingers then add some flour. If, when you dump it from the bowl, it runs all over your counter instead of sitting there like a lump, then scrape it back into the bowl and add some more flour.

Dump mixture onto a floured surface.

Though I use a big cutting board to roll out biscuits, it’s nice if you have one of those neat baker’s sheets with circles on it that helps you roll out a perfectly shaped pie crust but, if you don’t have one of those, then your kitchen counter will work just as well. After all, this isn’t precision biscuit making. Nobody’s going to test you to see if your biscuit dough rolls out perfectly round. I do recommend, however, that the counter top get a good scrubbing before you start rolling out biscuits on it. Especially, if you have cats. Food poisoning is not pleasant.

Sprinkle flour on top of dough and fold over.

Sprinkle flour onto dough and fold over again. Repeat as needed. (Don’t flour and fold 50 times or it’ll make your biscuit dough too stiff. Ten to fifteen fold-overs is plenty.)

What this does is it adds air and flour to the dough in layers which makes for flakier biscuits. It also gets them to the consistency needed to be able to cut them nicely. (This process comes in really handy if you’ve made your dough too runny. If that’s the case, you might need more than fifteen fold-overs.)

Roll out your biscuit dough.

Rub flour onto your rolling pin then roll the dough to a thickness of about half an inch.

You can roll them out thicker or thinner, depending on how you like your biscuits. Half an inch just happens to work for me.

Cut biscuits, place in pan, and pop into preheated oven.

When you’re cutting biscuits, jiggle your cutter a tiny bit to open up enough room to get a finger under the biscuit. Makes picking them up and putting them in the pan much easier.

Do not grease that pan!

Do not spread melted butter or put pats of butter on top of biscuits!

Purity in biscuits is essential!

Place pan in center of oven and bake 10 to 15 minutes.

How long you bake biscuits really depends on how brown you like them. And, of course, it depends on how your oven cooks. Trial and error will help you figure out the perfect time. If they’re getting too brown too quickly, do not reduce the oven temp. Just take them out of the oven sooner.

Serve hot … that means right out of the oven!

Everybody should be sitting at the table anxiously awaiting that first hot biscuit when those puppies come out of that oven. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, at least as far as foodstuffs, that comes even close to being as good as a hot biscuit with melted butter inside. Once they start to cool, then it’s time for the country ham or honey or jam or whatever other biscuit filler you have on hand. But when they’re pipin’ hot, it’s butter time.

FYI, margarine is not allowed. (I mean that!)

From beginning to end, it takes about 30 minutes to make perfect biscuits. (If it’s taking you any longer than that, then get the lead out!)

I like to serve my biscuits in a sea grass basket I bought while on vacation to Charleston with my daughter a few years ago. I found it at a road-side stand run by an old Gullah woman and her granddaughter. She makes them by hand and was sharing that knowledge and tradition with her family. Maybe I’m just a silly old Southern girl but Mom’s biscuits and that sea grass basket are connected, at least they are for me.

About biscuit cutters …

You can use just about anything to cut biscuits. Some folks use water glasses, or if they want angel biscuits they use shot classes. I use an old cookie cutter that’s about as weathered as I am. I also have a couple of shiny new cookie cutters (with frilly edges) that I use if I want smaller or larger biscuits.

About pans …

When it comes to pans, the older and more used the better. You can use a shiny new pan, or even a cookie sheet, but the best biscuits come from lovingly used biscuit pans. By that I mean that baking biscuits is the only thing that pan is ever used for. I have one that’s about 7′ by 11″ and is 1.5 ” deep that has never been used for anything else and it makes great biscuits.

When you go shopping for the perfect biscuit pan, don’t get one of those non-stick pans. Those things can just ruin a good biscuit. Be sure to get one that is deep enough — 1 inch works great. Also, unless you have a large family and need to double or triple this recipe, get one that holds about 12 average size biscuits comfortably. Biscuits don’t need a lot of room to expand sideways. They come out too flat if they have too much elbow room. They need to be a teensy bit crowded in the pan, even smooshing up against one another, to rise correctly.

I think I tried about four different pans before I found my perfect biscuit pan. I’m sure that if you make a sincere effort to look for it, you’ll find your perfect biscuit pan as well.

Fair warning …

Once you start making perfect biscuits, your family will no longer want to settle for toast or muffins or any of those other breakfast breads.

Don’t believe me? That’s okay, you’ll see.

This recipe makes a dozen average size biscuits so it feeds two.

Maybe three in a pinch.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I hope you enjoy my mom’s biscuit recipe as much as I have over the years. With my daughter out on her own, I don’t make them as often as I used to so am a little out of practice. You see, that’s the thing about biscuits, you have to make them often. You have to keep in practice to make really good biscuits.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

* Check out Domesticated Dilettante’s blog at http://domesticateddilettante.wordpress.com/ and the Southern Plate blog at http://www.southernplate.com/ You’ll find great recipes at both sites.

Looking at the world through new eyes!

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I started wearing reading glasses at nineteen. The kind old folks need to be able see menus, etc. I remember being a bit appalled at the time that I had eyes that were decades older than the rest of me.

No sooner did I catch up with my tired old eyes, than I needed cataract surgery — last week on my left eye and my right eye yesterday. What cataract surgery means, in case you’re not familiar with the process, is that my eyes received lens replacements. Now I can see better than I did when I was 18. Which means, ironically, that my eyes are now decades younger than the rest of me. Life is just weird sometimes.

Must be magic

What’s amazing to me is that medical science has come so far along in the last few decades that something like cataracts, which used to gradually make people blind, can now be removed along with the lens God gave us and an artificial lens, that is much like the contacts I’ve worn, can be implanted in its place and, voila, I can see 20/20 — like a kid again.

Now, if they could just magically whisk away my tired old muscles and saggy butt, I’d be all set. Only way I know of to fix that, however, is to walk, walk, and walk some more. So, back to the diet and exercise routine I gave up a decade ago.

Time to get this old girl in shape again.

No more excuses.

The rest of me needs to catch up with my eyeballs.

Credit where credit is due …

I have to admit that I was pretty nervous about having cataract surgery. My sweet sister Rosie, though, stuck with me through all of it and helped me keep it all in perspective (no pun intended). She has been my rock the last few weeks and I thank her more than she’ll ever know. (Even though she did make fun of me when I was high on oxygen and couldn’t stop giggling.)

The medical professionals who have guided me through this process have been wonderful. Their kindness and patience (even though I was late for two appointments) helped me cope with what was, for me, two very scary medical procedures. They are the best and I thank them for all they’ve done for me.

In fact, my hat is off to all the wonderful folks at Stones River Eye Center in Murfreesboro Tennessee.

For sale … cheap!

  • 1 Pair of multi-focal eyeglasses, in good condition
  • 1 Pair of clip-on sunglasses, tinted green
  • 3 Pairs of multi-focal contacts, one pair slightly used
  • 2 Pairs of single focus contacts (been in drawer for about three years so may be a little gummy by now)
  • Miscellaneous eyeglass cases, contact lens cases, eye drops, lens cleaners, contacts cleaners, etc.

… oh, wait, it is a poke in the eye!

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You’ve heard the expression, it beats a poke in the eye? Well, after the cataract surgery on my left eye yesterday, I can safely say that there are a whole world of things out there that beat a poke in the eye.

Golly but that smarts!

I didn’t expect it to be fun and games but I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for how sore my eye was going to be. It’s finally down to only a twinge here and there so, all things considered, it wasn’t really too awful. It’s a good thing too, otherwise, there would be a bunch of folks wandering around permanently with only one eye free of cataracts.

The best thing about the whole ordeal is that I can see with my left eye without glasses or contacts. I can even read small print. Not tiny print, not yet, but chances are, I’ll get there too.

Now, the scoop (no pun intended, well maybe a little one) on cataract surgery …

First, they set you up with oxygen

I have to say I’m not a big fan of that. It makes you a bit light-headed and I had to ask them to turn it down a bit because, at first, it was like having a fan blowing up my nose. Too much of a good thing and hard to breathe it all in.

Then comes the eye drops

… about a gazillion of them.They keep those babies coming for about an hour to make sure your eyeball can feel no pain. That’s a good thing in my book.

Followed by the duct tape

What, you didn’t know your eyeballs are secured with duct tape?  Just kidding! When the eye can feel no pain, they wheel you into the op room. You’re awake during this procedure and they have to make sure you don’t move around during it so they wedge your arms in next to your sides and then tape your head to the table. It’s probably not really duct tape. It’s probably just some really expensive version of it. Okay! I didn’t actually see the tape but it sure sounded like duct tape when they peeled a big strip of it off that roll.

And then, the poke in the eye

Next, they put a clear plastic cover over your face leaving only a small hole where your eye is. Then they poke a small slit in your eye, suck out the old lens, pop in a new one, and wham-bam  you’re done. The surgery itself takes less than 10 minutes. Yep, it’s a quickie.

The black hole

There is just a few moments, before the new lens is implanted, when you are blind in that eye. That is by far the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had. The light just disappears. Total blackness. That was very disconcerting to me and frightening. Fortunately, though, they had given me a strong enough tranquilizer to keep panic from taking over during that blackout.

The bitter end

The buzz from all that oxygen and tranquilizers lasts for maybe half an hour. Then they push you out the door with a whole bunch of instructions about eye drops and you’re on you own.

It pays to be prepared

I watched a couple of cataract removal videos on YouTube a few days before the procedure so was prepared for what would happen. If I hadn’t done that, I’m pretty sure no amount of fuzzy brain stuff on the planet would have kept me from having a panic attack when they came at my face with that plastic.

If you want to watch some of them on YouTube, click here. (NOTE: If you’re the squeamish type, don’t watch these videos.)

Aren’t they fascinating? No? Oh, well.

Momma told me not to …

The funny thing about this little adventure is that a lot of things happen that your mom told you to never do. For instance:

  • Never take drugs from strangers
  • Never put a plastic bag over your head
  • Never, ever, poke your eye with a sharp instrument

Now, isn’t that ironic? The very things your mom says never do and what to you do? You go out and pay somebody to do those same things.

What a silly, silly world in which we live.

A big THANK YOU to my sister for driving me to and from.

You can read her version of this adventure here. (I may never forgive her for those pics.)