I really hate to waste food, so every two weeks I'll go into my fridge and see what ingredients and food remnants exist, and imagine ways to use them up. Sometimes, the ingredients that I need to use up with coincide with a craving that I have.
The first thing I'd been craving were biscuits. But I was feeling lazy, and it was also very hot. And the thing about biscuits, to get good flaky biscuits, is that you need to work quickly so that you can keep the butter cold because its the cold butter that releases steam in the oven that gives biscuits their signature flakey layers.
In my mind, I was alright with sacrificing layers, but I just wanted good, flavorful breadiness. And the reason was that, in my mind, the second craving I had was for chicken fried chicken. And, if I could get myself together, I would be able to have cheddar, scallion and chive biscuits with a little piece of fried chicken on it, with some delicious cream gravy on top of that.
But first things first: the biscuit.
This recipe uses a "melted butter in cold buttermilk" method that is pretty common with what's known as a "drop biscuit". I cut my biscuit so that they could be the foundation for an egg sandwich or chicken fried chicken and gravy, but you can totally just drop some of this dough on a baking sheet and throw all cares to the wind. And they will still be delicious. Because this is a very forgiving recipe.
So if you are afraid of biscuits, this is the recipe for you.
Ingredients
8 tablespoons salted butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup thin-sliced scallions (about 3 tbsp.)
1 tablespoon chives (optional)
1 cup buttermilk
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2. Place 1 cup of buttermilk into your freezer for 15 minutes.
3. Melt butter until liquefied, but not boiling. Set aside to cool down.
4. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, garlic powder, onion powder and sugar. Next add the cheese, scallions and chives. Mix well until combined.
5. Make sure the butter is not hot to the touch. Warm is fine.
6. Remove the buttermilk from the freezer. Slowly add the cooled-down melted butter into the ice-cold buttermilk. Stir with a spoon until you start to notice the butter firms/seizes up, forming little yellow dotted clumps in the buttermilk.
7. Slowly add the buttermilk mixture into your flour mixture, stirring with a rubber spatula to make sure you are incorporating all of the flour and the buttermilk mixtures together. The dough should be pretty firm—not a very wet dough. If the dough seems too sticky and wet, add a tablespoon of flour until it seems you could gently form it into a rectangle to cut.
8. Sprinkle flour onto a counter or cutting board. Flip the dough from the bowl onto the cutting board. Push and press together in a “kneading” motion about 4 or 5 times until the dough can be formed into a 6-inch rectangle. It will be about 1 ½ to 2 inches tall.
9. Cut as many biscuits as you can by pressing down with a cutter or glass, making sure not to twist as you cut. I wanted large biscuits, so I used a 4-inch diameter glass and got about 7 biscuits, 5 perfectly round and 2 mis-shapened ones made from the scraps.
10. Place the biscuits on a parchment-lined sheet pan. I placed the biscuits in the freezer for 10 minutes just to make sure the butter was nice and firm before baking—this was a precautionary measure for a very hot house so I could make sure the biscuits didn’t just melt in the oven. You can skip this step if you feel like your biscuit dough was cold enough.
11. Brush the tops of the biscuits with a little melted butter and bake for 15 minutes. I check after 10 minutes just to make sure they aren’t cooking too fast.
12. Remove the biscuits from the oven with they are firm to the touch—mine take 15 minutes every time. They won’t be browned. Just golden.
13. You can brush the biscuits with a little more melted butter when they come out of the over. That’s your business, but trust me—you won’t be disappointed.
14. Serve.
Notes & Tips:
You can also “Drop” these biscuits from the mixing bowl right onto a sheet pan. This recipe is very much from the drop biscuit family.
You can make this recipe up to step 10. When they are firm and frozen, you can place in a zip-top plastic bag freeze, choosing to bake fresh biscuits whenever you want. The raw biscuits will hold in the freezer for up to 2 months.
If not eating immediately, you can store uneaten biscuits in a zip-top plastic bag. To reheat, I like to warm them in a 400-degree oven for 3-5 minutes.
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