...

[ilylynnbelle]

Mema’s Biscuits



Okay, so here’s the thing about biscuits: they are simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing to make. On the one hand, they usually only take a handful of ingredients and the most basic of baking skills.



On the other hand, everybody’s mom, aunt, and grandma makes them differently and none of them use a recipe. My mema’s method of adding ingredients to the flour, for example, was “until it looks right.” After she died, my dad and I spent hours on the internet, looking for any recipe we could try, determined not to let her light, fluffy, amazing biscuits die with her.



And I’ll be honest…once I found a recipe that made them right, I wrote it down and never looked at it again. But hey, at least I wrote it down, right? And now I’m giving it to you, because biscuits are cheap, filling, delicious, and they can be easy with a little bit of practice.



Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10-15 minutes

Spoonie Info: This takes a good bit of squeezing, mixing, and kneading with the hands. I can’t usually do it on days when I’m having a flare-up in my knuckles. It also requires a bit of cleanup because the flour and dough tend to get everywhere.



You will need:

• large glass, wood, or plastic mixing bowl
• large fork
• metal pan or cookie sheet
• flat, clean surface
• 2 cups White Lily self-rising flour, plus extra for kneading
• ¼ cup Crisco vegetable shortening
• 1 cup buttermilk (it has to be buttermilk, otherwise they won’t rise)

Optional:

• flour sifter
• biscuit cutter
• apron

Instructions:

1. Wash your hands up to the elbows. If you have an apron, put it on.
2. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Using a paper towel dabbed in shortening, thoroughly grease your pan or cookie sheet. Set aside.
4. Sift 2 cups flour into your bowl. If you don’t have a sifter, just dump it in, it’ll be fine.
5. With the fork, cut half your Crisco into the flour and kind of chop-mix it in.
6. Test the flour’s consistency by taking a handful and squeezing, then pressing your finger into it. The flour should bind together when squeezed but crumble easily when pressed. If it’s not there yet, keep cutting the rest of your Crisco in until it gets there.
7. Once the Crisco is mixed in, pour in about 1/3 of the cup of buttermilk and mix in with the fork. The goal is to get the flour to start to bind together to form a dough. You don’t want it to be too sticky, because then it’s hard to handle. But you don’t want it to be too dry and crumbly, because then your biscuits will be, too.
8. If you need more buttermilk, keep adding more, mixing as you go, until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl and become a more-or-less cohesive lump.
9. Sprinkle a thin layer of flour on your flat, clean surface and on the top of your dough lump. Also get some on your palms. Then pick up the dough, plop it on the surface, and knead it a bit. Not a lot! Just fold it over on itself a couple of times until it’s easy to work with.
10. Pat the dough down flat, until it’s 3/4″ to an inch thick. Bear in mind, thicker means fluffier but also slightly longer cook time. But you also don’t want them TOO thin.
11. Dip your biscuit cutter in some flour and use it (a round cookie cutter is just as good and essentially the same thing anyway) to cut rounds out of the dough. Cut these as close as you can to one another to get as many rounds out of it as possible. Place them on your pan/cookie sheet in a grid pattern with a bit of space between them.
12. Gather up the remaining dough from around your cut-outs, roll it into a ball, pat flat, and cut again. Keep doing this until all your dough is used. (You will probably be left with just slightly too little for a real biscuit. My grandmother used to give this to me so I could make my own little biscuit in whatever shape I wanted. I now do this with my little sister.)
13. Don’t have a cookie cutter or biscuit butter? You can use anything round with reasonably thin edges. I used to use a coffee mug. You can also just break the dough up into pieces, roll it into balls (golf to tennis-sized), pat them flat, and plop them on the pan.
14. Stick ‘em in the oven and start cleaning up your mess. Keep an eye on the clock though! Check them at ten minutes and again at fifteen. You want them to puff up and start to get a little golden on the bottom and (slightly less so) on the top.
15. Think they’re done? Take ‘em out (dear god use an oven mitt), and cut into the biggest one. Insides should be fluffy and steaming, not doughy at all.
16. Now slather them with butter and/or honey. Eat them hot, eat them plain, eat them cold the next day with a tomato slice stuffed in, crumble them up in a bowl and cover them with gravy, put some apple butter on ‘em. They should keep for about a week…but they never last that long in our house.

#food#recipes#biscuits#mema's biscuits#seriously this sounds so much more complicated than it actually is#it's basically just mix the stuff together#pat out the dough#cut out the biscuits#bake 'em#eat 'em#that's literally it#also i find I end up tweaking this a little every time I do it in search of the perfect biscuit#I don't measure the crisco anymore#or the buttermilk#I just kinda pour them out and mix until it looks right#man now I wanna make some but it's 1:30am



(х)

@темы: Житейское, Полезное