The World’s Best Biscuits—End of Story

By miss5elements

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for flouring your work surface and rolling pin
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 cup solid vegetable shortening
• 2 1/2 cups buttermilk

Details

Servings 8
Adapted from oprah.com

Preparation

Step 1

Makes 8 to 10 biscuits

Directions

To Make the Honey Butter

Bring 2 tablespoons of water to a boil in a small pot.

Slowly whisk in the butter, piece by piece, letting each piece melt completely into the water before adding the next one. Add the honey and salt, and whisk everything together until you have a shiny, well-combined liquid.

To Make the Biscuits

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a large bowl, sift together the fl our, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar. (If you don’t have a sifter, you can use a whisk.)

Add the vegetable shortening. Using a pastry cutter, or holding a butter knife in each hand, cut through the shortening and flour in an X-shaped motion until the shortening is mixed in. Be careful to break up any large pieces. You should end up with lots of little pebbles.

Add the buttermilk and use your hands to mix everything together, turning the mixture until it forms a dough. Then keep turning and kneading until you’ve got a roughly shaped ball of dough. If things get sticky, add a little bit of flour.

Flour a 3 ½-inch round pastry cutter, and cut out as many rounds of dough as possible (you should have 8 to 10 or so). Reflour the cutter as you go. (When we make these at the restaurant, we usually bake off the leftover pieces and eat them ourselves.)