Mrs. Devil just asked me to make biscuits to go with the 16-bean soup she just made. I just realized that I have no favourite biscuit recipe. (I also just realized that I’ve just overused the word ‘just’.)
As far as limitations, we have King Arthur ‘regular’ and ‘bread’ flour. No access to White Lily, buttermilk or whole milk (but we do have half/half, salted and unsalted butter and a collection of vinegars). I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I also have some gluten on hand (because my mother-in-law is allergic to it and I’m an asshole.) (Actually, I use it when making bread, but not sure if that’s relevant to my asshollery.)
Do you have a Super Walmart nearby? I’m a Southern cook and I can’t make biscuits better than their Great Value brand frozen Buttermilk Biscuits. Open bag, place biscuits on pan, bake for 20 minutes is sooooooo much less trouble than making them from scratch when what is in the bag is better than any homemade one I’ve ever had.
You can cut in some butter (pretty much as much as you want. Try 4 TBSP :P) to make up for the lack of fat in using half and half instead of heavy cream.
I always use the recipe from the back of the Clabber Girl Baking Soda can. It’s a super easy, pretty much can’t fail recipe. Since it doesn’t contain buttermilk, I generally have all the ingredients in the house at any point. I get compliments every time.
This is essentially what I do, using 4-5T of butter instead of shortening.
If all I have is salted butter, I don’t add the salt in, and they work fine. Lard also works well if you happen to have that. My aunt one time used bacon fat since she was out of butter - it worked, but they weren’t as fluffy, since the bacon fat tends to melt somewhat was you’re working with it.
Biscuits are easy. Promise me you won’t go buy the frozen ones (I do make them in advance and freeze before baking - that works very well).
1-3/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
5 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
Mix together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter, until it looks crumbly. Stir in the buttermilk. Don’t overmix the dough. It will be soft but needs only light flouring to roll out and cut biscuits, of desired size and thickness. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until lightly browned.
In the dried bean section, you will find bags of beans which are labeled 15 or 16 or 17 bean soup mix. They generally contain a little packet of ham flavored powder in them as well as the beans. Just pick over the beans and rinse and drain and soak as you normally do, and then cook according to package directions.
Personally, no matter what kind of beans I make, I always pan fry some diced onion until it’s limp and transparent and add this to the beans while they cook. I might do the same with some celery, but onions are a must. I’ve also been known to add some shredded carrot and diced tomatoes to the beans, and never had a complaint. And I always put in some kind of smoked pork. It might be bacon, it might be ham, it might be a smoked pork chop, but beans need pork.
Yes. In addition to needing pork, beans need cornbread.
If I had cornmeal and some eggs, I could have made ham and eggs, if I had eggs. Wait, that’s not quoite right.
I don’t thinkthe Goya 16-bean packages comr woth ‘spive’ packts. We’ll ise a ham hock or simikar, or if it’s save the vegetables time, bacon or something smokey if thats all we Holy shot did it come out great, but tjats kind; f . Definitely onions, varots and a parsnop. This one also had ex-broccoli stalks for flavour.
of the beuty of bran soup. You get some glorious results. And thans for the bisciut input. For a few mintes prep yow get crispy and fluufy nalls of heaven. what a nifgt!
then it’s probably a bad recipe, or you are seriously overmixing/overcompacting your dough. That or your baking powder is ancient and no longer has any leavening powers (this DOES happen! Baking Powder has a fairly limited shelf life!)
Biscuits should not be challenging to at least make ‘good’. Getting to ‘transcendent’ is really where it gets challenging.
Three or four years ago, I started making yeast biscuits – they go better with some dishes than others and they’re a little more time-consuming to make (and a bigger mess to work with, because the dough is pretty wet), but they are mighty tasty. They’ve got yeast, baking powder, and baking soda.
If I don’t have the time or inclination to make those, I just go with the recipe on whatever can of baking powder I happen to have.
Whichever kind I’m making, I’m of the same opinion of biscuits as I am with cornbread: cast iron is Your Key to Success. With biscuits, I put the cast iron pan in the 350-degree oven with a couple of tablespoons of shortening and/or butter to let the pan come up to temperature and also melt the shortening, and then I dip the top of the biscuits in the melted shortening before placing the bottoms in the pan – it may not substantially affect the taste, but they sure look pretty when they come out of the oven.
Yeah, yeah, “sixteen” beans… I read the ingredient list once, it had all kinds of duplications, listing both large red kidney beans and small red kidney beans. Cheating.
Oh yes, use chicken broth for at least part of the water. It makes a huge difference. Chef Troy told me this, and he was right. I use the broth in the box, or Better than Bullion base. Of course, if you have homemade chicken stock around, you can use that, too.
