Buttermilk Biscuits

Happy Weekend!

I scooted down to North Carolina Friday night to spend the weekend with this little girl - and cook up some garbage plates for Meagan and Jay!

I usually buy canned biscuits, but that simply won't do for Jay, born and raise off of scratch biscuits, so I found a super easy (and Jay-approved!) recipe for Southern Style Buttermilk Biscuits!

You Will Need:

4 cups self-rising flour

1/2 cup Crisco vegetable shortening, chilled

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

2 Tbsp melted butter, optional

Heat oven to 450 degrees.

Grease baking pan with vegetable shortening.

Measure flour by spooning flour lightly into measuring cup and using your fingertips, work the shortening into the flour until the pieces are about the size of peas (I kind of schmear the shortening into the flour with my fingertips to make petals of the shortening).

Stir in the buttermilk until the flour is moistened. Do not over-mix. Add enough buttermilk so that the dough will come away from the bowl mostly without sticking to it (don't get the dough too wet).

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Shape dough into a ball using floured hands. Handle the dough as little as possible - this will keep them light and flaky. Press the dough to flatten it slightly, and fold it in half. Repeat 4 - 6 more times.

Lightly flatten dough to 1/2-inch thick and cut biscuits outing a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter, without twisting the cutter.

Place biscuits on the pan so that each biscuit is touching (for soft biscuits) or place them slightly apart for more crisp biscuits.

Put into the oven and bake just until dough has started to rise (but before they've started to brown). Remove from the oven and butter the tops of the biscuits.

Return to oven and bake for 5-10 minutes or until biscuits are lightly browned.

Remove from oven and butter tops again (optional).

Yum Yum! Look at all those layers!

And then you can eat them as is, or serve them garbage plate style. :)

Which, for those of you who don't know, is not the traditional upstate New York garbage plate, but my southern-style breakfast rendition, but I borrow the name because it does just look like a plate of garbage.

Biscuits with home fries on top, topped with sausage gravy, and theeeen topped with cheese and an egg over easy. 

Aaaand now I need a nap. If you're tackling this bad boy definitely don't have anything scheduled to do afterwards - kind of like post-op notes: no heavy lifting, definitely don't operate heavy machinery and just taaaake it easy.