Self-Rising Biscuits

By cindyandmojo

Ingredients

• 2-1/3 cups Whole Milk
• 3 Tablespoons White Distilled Vinegar
• 6 cups Self-rising Flour, Plus More For Kneading
• 1-1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 3/4 cups Lard (OR Butter OR Shortening OR A Combination)
• Melted Salted Butter, For Brushing

Details

Servings 24
Preparation time 10mins
Cooking time 20mins
Adapted from thepioneerwoman.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 475 F.

In a measuring pitcher, combine milk and vinegar. Stir together and set aside for 10 minutes. Note: You can use 2 1/2 cups buttermilk instead of the milk and vinegar if you have some on hand.

In a large bowl sift together the flour and salt. Use a pastry cutter to cut in the lard (or butter or shortening or both) until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring gently with a fork or wooden spoon until it all comes together. Flour the surface, then turn out the dough and knead 10-15 times, adding a little flour so it's less sticky.

Roll out dough to 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick and use a biscuit cutter to cut medium to small circles. Place on a baking sheet 1/2 inch apart and bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Remove from oven and immediately brush on melted butter. To die for!

JUST LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER USED TO MAKE. I MISS HER. I MIGHT MAKE THESE TONIGHT MYSELF

I’m hoping one day I’m the grandmother who makes these awesome biscuits. Any food with the word “Southern” in it has won my heart. Who doesn’t love Southern cooking?

Love this recipe!! Buttermilk always adds such good tang!! I use the the lard/butter combo myself!! Of course DH need sausage gravy with them!!

Sweet milk is ordinary cows milk. I’ve lived in Georgia for 27 years & still can’t get use to people referring to it as ‘sweet milk’. Michelle in Virginia, you are absolutely correct. Being an Iowa farmer’s daughter we rendered our own lard. Nothing could ever begin to compare with my grandmother’s pie crust. It would absolutely melt in your mouth. Of course people are health conscious these days but people are not physically working like they use to either. I don’t make pie very often anymore, but when I do, I’m using lard.

Michelle is so right. Lard makes fabulous pie crust

“Sweet milk” is just another way of denoting regular milk, which has not soured or been soured to make buttermilk. Straight out of the carton (or cow, in my case!)

That’s the way my grandma taught me to make biscuits and that’s how I still make them.

Love the vinegar shortcut. I always use it when I make chocolate sheet cake. I never have any dang buttermilk around either, Ree

I’m a southern girl, and this is how we made biscuits. We never bothered with the buttermilk though. We hardly ever had any in the house, so we just used sweet milk to make the biscuits. They are wonderful both ways! And to be truly southern you need to use White Lily Flour. You can skip that whole sifting step. It is the lightest, fluffiest flour around. It will take your biscuits to a whole new level!

Angela, White Lily is a soft wheat flour that is ideal for pastry like biscuits, cookies & pie crust because of its low protein/ gluten content. Because of this it is not a good choice for pizza crust or other bread doughs where you need higher gluten to give the dough structure & texture. Use all purpose or bread flour for pizza dough & you will be much happier!

My life changed when I found out you can get dry buttermilk – just like dry milk, you mix it with water. The only difference is the can of dry stuff needs to be kept in the refrigerator. I love buttermilk pancakes and biscuits!

Ditto. Between me and my hubby cooking and baking we couldn’t keep enough buttermilk on hand. Then I discovered the dry version. I just mix it into the dry ingredients and then add the liquids/water etc.

canned biscuits…ick! (personal opinion only, don’t hate on me!) The frozen ones are pretty good, but these are so quick and easy to whip up, it doesn’t take much longer than getting out the frozen ones, and if you add in the amount of time it takes for them to thaw before they start cooking, making your own this way is actually quicker.

They make a powdered buttermilk. Seems like that would be a good pantry staple for the ranch!

I think I could inhale a few of these right about now! They remind me of the baking powder biscuits I’ve made for years, but my recipe doesn’t call for buttermilk. We always make the biscuits for strawberry shortcake — what a treat. Thanks for the tips.

Similar to my recipe, which is Granny’s recipe. Main difference: we ALWAYS have buttermilk. My kids will eat buttermilk and rice for dinner, or pour it on beans and rice, or on their spicy Indian food. If there’s any left at the end of the week, well, biscuits or pancakes or waffles or coffee cake takes care of that! Another wonderful substitute for buttermilk in baking recipes is plain yogurt, thinned out with a little bit of water. In fact, I prefer plain yogurt to buttermilk in biscuits now (but the kids usually gobble that up, too.)

I use a mix of plain whole milk yogurt and milk all the time as a sub for buttermilk. I also will sometimes switch out some of the milk for cottage cheese. I’m curious if anyone remembers their moms or grandmothers using clabber to make biscuits. You still could if you had a source for raw milk.

heather r

Purchase some buttermilk on your next shopping trip and then make these biscuits. They will be much better. My husband can definitely tell when I have made a substitution for the buttermilk. You just need to lightly fry some country ham to put in these biscuits. Yum yum.

Small tins of powdered buttermilk has been for at least the last 15-20 years and can be found on (most) store shelves next to boxes of powdered whole milk. Having been raised in the South with only a taste of whole milk ONLY in cereal, milk in my house is long spoiled before being consumed. The introduction of powdered buttermilk was therefore a Godsend. For those who want to cheat a wee bit, butter flavoured shortening is highly recommended. Although they’ve been slightly modified in recent years due to both new corporate owners ( it wasnt broke, so why fix it?) and the death of the original “Biscuit Lady,” the Loveless Cafe/Motel in southwest Nashville makes some of the best biscuits on the planet. Add sorghum molasses and it’s a slice of heaven.

This is how my Mom, Grandmother and Great Grandmother used to make them. Even though I am 40, uuuughhh +, my Mom always makes me buscuits when I go home to visit. It’s such a treat!

I never roll my biscuits. They key to a fluffy one is to keep the dough as wet as possible and handle it as little as possible. I dump the dough out and dust the top with flour and gently press it down.

To cook preheat oven to 400 and take biscuits out put on greased cookie sheet touching and oil tops lightly and bake for 20 minutes! Awesome! Thanks!

Many years ago, my mother-in-law taught me to make these biscuits. She said to add a “scoop” of lard (using her hand to make the scoop) and add a “gulp” of buttermilk (which means pour the milk out until it makes a “gulp” sound). She never measured anything but was the best cook I ever knew.

I have finally learned to make gluten and dairy free biscuits my family loves – but there is just no rolling them. I butter my hands (with coconut oil – spray in the summer, melted in the winter) and form by hand. I make them really big because thats what they like. I grew up a yankee and never had biscuits except from bisquick growing up – real biscuits are so lovely and simple!

To freeze…make your biscuits but do not bake them. Simple put them on a sheet pan in the freezer until they are completely frozen. Then place them in a freezer bag. I get mine out and let them sit while the oven heats, then bake as directed. Mmmmm! Breakfast anytime.

I too am a born GRITS (girl raised in the South) and this was how my Moma made her biscuits using Crisco shortening/lard. However, she never rolled them out – she would pinch them off and roll them in her palms and they would have a 3 finger press on top. Always perfect. I can see her hands as she made these, I think she must be making them in Heaven right now and covering them in syrup for Daddy

Wanda, I have been making biscuits just as you described for 42yrs. I don’t roll them or measure anything either. Put the flour in a bowl add the shortening then pour in the buttermilk and mix by hand until it makes a soft ball of dough. Pinch off amount the size of biscuit I want. Just knead a little while folding in on itself. And the three finger press! One other thing is, I have never added salt to the self-rising flour.

That’s how I STILL make biscuits, after more than 50 years of cooking. Crisco, Martha White flour, and milk. Mix in bowl with my hands (I don’t measure) just until it’s right, pinch off, roll in my hands, plop in a greased cast iron skillet or my Pampered Chef round pan, three finger pat on top, and bake in HOT oven. That’s how I taught my son and daughters, and my granddaughter. So glad to see other people still doing it the “old” way…

I freeze it in ice cube trays, then I can pull out quantities large or small. Buying local farm churned buttermilk makes it well work having on hand and tastes much different than soured milk. I never understood how my grandparents loved to drink it til I got the real thing.

cutting in squares is the way to go. no waste! and I use my food processor to make the dough. cut in the fat first, then add the buttermilk and pulse just a couple of times till it just comes together. easy peasy.

These sound good, but I’ve found through much experimentation that my preferred method of making what all my friends and family say are the best biscuits they’ve ever had is with using raw (unpasteurized) cream as my fat and liquid. So much easier than having to cut in butter or lard. The biscuits are even better if the raw cream is several months old (I have used it at 6 months old even) having naturally soured slowly in the fridge. I’ve never tried it with self-rising flour because I don’t buy it, but I’m sure it would work perfectly. I don’t have a strict recipe, especially for the amount of cream. I just add a decent amount and start combining. Then I add a little more as necessary to get a shaggy just coming together mixture. I keep the kneading to a minimum, roll, then cut. I bake them at 400 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes. My flour mixture is about 2 teaspoons baking powder per cup of flour with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

These look amazing! Since I am a Northerner, I have to ask, how long do these keep? I would love to make them for our weekend away, but want to e sure they’ll be delicious a day later. Thanks!

These are the biscuits my Granny taught me to make but we put hot, thick cocoa on top!! Best thing ever cocoa and biscuits

Could you add some melted chocolate or cocoa powder to this recipe for a mixture of plain and chocolate

I LOVE biscuits. When I make them for the “family”, I know I am making them for me…as I will eat all the leftovers plain, with jelly, as an egg/cheese/bacon or sausage sandwich. My father-in-law always requests my biscuits and they are what I bring to Thanksgiving dinner. My mother taught me 50 years ago how to make them. Cannot get enough. My last meal would be biscuits. As for kneading – yes. As for buttermilk – yes, if you have it. Milk, half and half and cream also work (but adjust the leavening). Sometimes they are baked side by side in a round to make soft sides. Sometimes sugar is added to make shortcake. Add chives. Add cheese. Faster than rice as a dinner side. Thanks, Ree, now they are on my mind and I’m going to have to make some tonight. Love your pictures, but they are making me hungry!

Can you mix these cut them and then freeze some of them for later? Would they need to thaw before baking or just put them in the oven?

A nice trick I learned from a little old southern lady here in Tennessee, when you roll the dough out, lightly flour it, fold it over a couple of times, then roll it out again to cut your buscuits. This gives your buscuits a nice layered texture so they pull apart clean layers. And placing the buscuits touching each other on the baking sheet helps prevent the sides from browning and forming a crust, if you like them that way. She also told me about Southern Buscuit Formula L Complete Buscuit Mix. It has shortening flakes already in the flour, so all you do is add the buttermilk.

Don’t knock buttermilk until you’ve tried it with a good ham sandwich!!! Of course I grew up drinking it and still drink it now in my mid 60′s. With a cow always in milk we always had fresh milk, butter and buttermilk while growing up. These days I have goats and always drink that milk fresh. BTW, you can make a ricotta style cheese by using milk and white vinegar using the same principle Ree uses to make her buttermilk only in larger quantities. Let set a while, then strain through cheesecloth and let drain to your personal consistency.

I’m going to make these but there’s only 2 of us here now and this recipe is way too much. My freezer’s full of leftovers, so I’m going to try to convert it on my own. It would be so nice if you could include a conversion recipe for 2 with your recipes. We love your cowboy chicken!

Yes but self-rising flour has additional ingredients: As a substitute for 1 cup of self-rising flour, place 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a measuring cup. Add all-purpose flour to measure 1 cup.

I always keep buttermilk on hand. Can’t seem to make biscuits or cornbread without it. I make both weekly, sometimes several times a week. I use oil instead of shortening or lard & they always turn out delicious. The post about not turning the cutter, just straight in & straight out is correct. My family prefers thinner biscuits so I always pat the dough thin with my hands, don’t even roll them out!!

In the baking section of most grocery stores, there is powdered buttermilk. You just add water!! It’s great to keep on hand! I grew up in the country, and my mom always had it on hand for baking, and it keeps forever!!

My mom never made us biscuits, so it was canned variety. I normally make the ones I found called “7-up biscuits” though I make them with ginger ale. I am going to give these a try next month when I can get some self rising flour.

I hate to say it, but the old vinegar and milk trick is a big no no in my world. The loss of flavor in things like biscuits is very noticeable, and sad. I’d rather not make biscuits than make them with out buttermilk. Buttermilk freezes just fine, so you can always have it on hand. Save the vinegar for cleaning, pickling, and salad dressings

My Grandma & my Mama always used self rising flour ,and the real buttermilk .So some years ago ( not telling how many years ) when I was married I did also . Now I’m teaching my Granddaughter how to make drop biscuits , then on to the roll out biscuits . One thing I learned early on , was not to knead or handle the dough so much ,( it makes a tougher biscuit ) so handle the dough gently , another thing ,I always brush the tops with butter before baking ,

We do one but instead of using lard/butter use mayonnaise. It makes them very moist

Self- rising flour has leavening in it. The flour part is the same as all- purpose. To make self- rising flour, just add 11/4 t. Baking powder + 1/4 t. Salt to every 1 cup of flour in your recipe.

No it is not the same as AP flour. self-rising flour has baking powder and salt already added. To make your own self-rising flour, just Google how to make self-rising flour and you get the amounts of each ingredient.

Ree, to make these REAL Southern biscuits you need to mix the ingredients with your hands. And none of that rolling and cookie cutter business – make a small ball of dough with your hands, put it on the cookie sheet, then mash it with your fist.

I’m a old fashion hands on cook…I always use frozen butter when making biscuits. I grate it in using my cheese grater then work into the dry ingredients using my fingertips. Mixes in quickly and uniformly.

I make this but call them cat head bisquits. I just glop out a spoonful into flour to dust then put on cookie sheet. I can make them big or little. They look like cat heads! Not pretty, but good!!! I use 2 and half cups flour, half cup butter crisco, 1 cup milk. Cook on 500 and done in about 10 min. Very quick and easy!!!

News flash!!! Butter and lard are actually the healthiest fats! For years we have been given the wrong information. Those real ingredients that our grandparents and beyond used were actually the best ingredients and the shortening, vegetable oils, margarines and low fat butters that are all highly processed with added petroleum products are the real culprits in making us fat. Isn’t it wonderful to know that?

Same way my mom and Gma made theirs and how I make mine. Super simple and outrageously delicious.

I don’t often buy self-rising flour. You can replace it with all purpose flour mixed with baking powder and salt.

How many biscuits does this recipe make roughly?

My Mom taught me how to make them with SR flour, crisco and buttermilk. She never measured, just pulled it all together in a little blue pyrex bowl. They were great! Now I use butter instead of crisco to avoid trans-fat.

I want to make them something this week, yum! Even though they will disappear before you know it with my family……:D

I know these must be Delicious, however, I cannot make these because I would simply eat all of them. LOL !! YUM

This is my recipe too, but I’m from Indiana. I finally asked my hubby’s mother (who is from Alabama) how to make “southern biscuits”. She was very gracious & even went and got me the “right” flour….White Lilly brand Self-Rising Flour. Hands down the best flour for these! Super yummy with my homemade strawberry jam or wild grape jelly….YUM!

However, up here in Canada we have all purpose flour, not self raising flour. Do you know how much baking power I would need to add for this recipe?

I keep powdered milk in my pantry just for my biscuits. Add it right in with the flour, then add water as the liquid.

How many biscuits does this recipe make? Seems like a large quantity recipe..just curious! Thanks!

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