Homemade Fluffy Biscuits — you can do it!
Today I have an example of what I pulled off last week with some leftovers, along with these homemade fluffy biscuits recipe — they were so delicious!
It started with a big pork loin in the crock pot. We had that for dinner one night. A couple days later I saw the leftover pork in the fridge, and since we spend so much on healthy meat, I surely never let it go to waste. So I threw that into a pot full of chicken and beef stock that I'd had in the freezer (yep, I mixed them), seasoned it up with sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, added veggies, and we had soup that night.
I made too much, as usual, so I decided to make “Pork Ala King” for dinner. This can be “Chicken Ala King”, “Beef Ala King”, or “Ala-whatever you want” if you have leftover soup. I thickened my soup, and served it over these homemade fluffy biscuits.
How to thicken soup: mix equal parts flour and cold water with a whisk. About 1/3 cup of each. Slowly stir in some of the hot soup into this mixture until your bowl is almost full then stir that mixture slowly into the soup as you keep whisking. (This is also how you make gravy!)
Serve over the biscuits below and there you have it, Ala King, and we got three meals from one night's meat – not bad!
Homemade Fluffy Biscuits Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 cups of your favorite all-purpose flour + more for rolling out the dough — I used organic white unbleached all-purpose flour, and when I tried it with Einkorn flour they were still tasty but not as fluffy for sure, so keep that in mind.
- 2 Tablespoons baking powder without aluminum
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 2 teaspoons sea salt
- 3/4 cup/12 Tablespoons cold butter cut into small pieces
- 1 1/2 cup milk or buttermilk — maybe a little more or less depending on the dough you don't want it to feel dry or sticky
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450*.
- Put the first 5 ingredients in a food processor and mix, then add in the butter and mix. Add the milk a little at a time, just until the dough clings together. If it feels too dry add a bit more milk, you'll want it to hold together but still be a smooth dough without being wet or sticky. Turn it out onto a floured countertop. Using a rolling pin and roll it into a rectangle, using enough flour so it's not sticky, roll gently and not too much or they won't turn out fluffy. Fold the dough over onto itself, flatten again and do this 4-5 times so you end up with dough about 3/4-1 inch thick and about 8-9" by 10-11" rectangle. (You're forming the fluffy layers to make the light puffy biscuit.) Use a glass about 2.5" diameter to cut out circles and place onto a parchment paper lined or buttered cookie sheet (never Teflon) -- they can be touching just on the sides to get them all onto one pan, but not smooshed together. With the pieces leftover just lightly smush them together and either roll them and flatten into a biscuit shape with your hands, or use the glass to cut circles into the rest of the smushed-together dough until it's all gone. Those last ones won't look as pretty as the first, but they'll taste so good no one will care. 🙂
- Bake for 11-13 minutes or until a nice golden brown, that's how you'll know they're done on the inside.
Adapted from my Better Homes & Garden's cookbook -- here are some variation suggestions they listed for these homemade fluffy biscuits:
- --For cornmeal biscuits replace 3/4 cup cornmeal flour for some of the other flour.
- --For garden biscuits add in 2 Tablespoons finely chopped carrot, 1 Tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 teaspoon finely chopped green onion to the mixture.
- --For sour cream biscuits use 1 1/2 cup sour cream for part of the milk.
- If anyone has tried these variations, let us know how they come out!
Be sure to read the comments for some GREAT tips!
Please share examples of how you got creative with leftovers, or let us know of any “general” tips you know of for using up what you've got, too!
More you might like:
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Sandra M says
Hi Kelly,
I’m going to try your keto dinner roll recipe later today! I wanted to ask how you think this biscuit recipe might work if I sub keto-safe flours, like maybe almond with a little coconut flour? Please let me know your thoughts when you have a chance. We are biscuit lovers (I originally hail from the deep South USA, home of all things biscuit!) and I am always hoping for a really great keto biscuit recipe to bring back the yum. I have a few keto biscuit recipes that we use and they aren’t too bad, but…still looking. 🙂 I have a great keto sausage gravy that I make that is good tasting even to non-keto people. Anyway, THANKS! Love your blog!
KitchenKop says
Hi Sandra,
Well I have to say that I have no idea how that would work to sub-out the flours, sometimes that’s risky BUT the keto rolls are sort of biscuit-y so I think you’d love them and that would be a safer way to go! 🙂
Kelly
Susan says
I made these last night following the recipe exactly and they were wonderful!
Will defintely be making them again — so yummy!
cindy says
Kelly, just happened to see this post while watching your hubby cook the turkey. I will have my hubby watch this so he too can do this! But what I wanted to note is that, with our size family (7 or 8 depending if DD is home from college) and my DH working from home 3 days per week, we very rarely, if ever, have leftovers for another dinner. We buy our own beef and pork so we are frugal with our meat. For 8 people, a 3lb roast just doesn’t go that far. I might have lots of broth left over (if I do a crock pot meal) but I have to start over with more meat the next time.
You, along with some others who are promoting real food and frugal living, have great recipes and ideas, but it’s frustrating to see many of these are aimed at smaller families. In 2002 I had my 5th child (first boy–and ok, he didn’t eat food then!) but the rest of my children, girls age 6 thru 17 at the time) ate mostly normal portions, and real food at that. OK, back then we were doing boxed mac & cheese and other processed foods, but mostly home cooking nonetheless. Then in 2009 we added two more young boys through adoption. So we have 4 ‘men’ including DH along with 2 older teen girls, plus myself, for 3 meals plus snacks all day long because we homeschool. It’s very difficult to provide enough calories and variety while cooking from scratch for almost every meal. It’s exhausting. And you may say that I can do bulk cooking on Saturdays or Sundays. But those same people need to eat on those days too, then Sunday is breakfast, then church, then home to eat lunch, then cleanup, then dinner again. Then they need a snack in between lunch and dinner, or dessert if we eat early enough. Those men just can’t skip meals the way we girls can. I can eat lunch and be done till late dinner. My girls usually eat brunch with me then dinner. The boys are not allowed to take food out of the fridge, because most things are needed for recipes, etc. except fresh fruit which we buy several times a week. We don’t bake that often, but if we do make banana bread or something like that, it’s gone after a few hours!
I’d love to get some ideas from you on bulk meals and healthy snacks that are more filling than PB and celery, etc. Another problem is that since making our own bread with our own wheat, the boys aren’t as crazy about bread. They like cooked meals better. And they’re not crazy about beans either, which would be a good budget stretcher. I’d force it but suddenly one of my dd’s is off beans too. I’ve figured that it’s something with their body metabolism that’s telling them not to eat them. I’ve been told to eat a paleo-type diet, which is better for O blood types, so I’m letting it ride. I myself am not eating starches, grains, or dairy right now, but I’ll eat just about any vegetable available. Was making my own tortillas using your posted recipe, but it takes sooooo long to make a couple dozen, but then again, 24 tortillas is only 3 per person, so afer one dinner and maybe one lunch, they’re gone!
I’d really love to get your feedback on this issue.
Thanks!
KitchenKop says
Cindy, I don’t know how I missed it before, but I JUST now saw your comment here when I was looking for something else, I’m sorry!!!
I’ll post this question on Facebook soon and see what we can find out as far as good suggestions for big family meals.
Kelly
Lise says
I use Whey instead of milk and my biscuts turn out really light and flakey
sunsalt says
I also just use unbleached white flour and butter for biscuits. We don’t have them all that often – mostly with Chicken and Noodles. (my family doesn’t like biscuits and gravy. (I know!) or we’d probably have them more often)
My favorite way to use leftover roast beef is to shred it into homemade gravy and serve it over individual yorkshire puddings
Kelly the Kitchen Kop says
Hi Mary,
VERY helpful info, thanks so much!
Kelly
Mary says
Biscuit advise found on the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa: Ingredients should be COLD. She doesn’t go as far as some people and chill the dry ingredients. She just makes sure that the butter and buttermilk are cold. She was using a KitchenAid stand mixer and as soon as the wet was incorporated into the dry, she stopped mixing, asap. Light, flaky biscuits were the results.
Hope this is helpful.
Kelly says
OH, and those weren’t my biscuits, I found that pic online. Mine did look similar, though.
Kelly says
Katie, that makes so much sense, I’ll bet you’re exactly right, I’ll remember your advice next time, thank you!
Katie says
I’ve been messing around with my Mom’s biscuit recipe all winter, trying different fats, amounts and kinds of whole wheat flour, and soaked options. Tonight I did a little side-by-side experiment. Here’s what I learned:
*Soaking is tricky for biscuits, because the KEY to light pastry is not handling the dough too much. If you can mix in the milk with 12 stirs of the fork, don’t do 13! In order to soak the flour with the fat cut in overnight and THEN add the salt and leavening agent, since they would inhibit the process of breaking down the enzyme inhibitors – ha! – you have to overknead the dough to make sure the leavening is distributed evenly. The soaked biscuits weren’t bad, but they are far from fluffy.
*Regular whole wheat flour can be done about 1/2 and 1/2 with acceptable results, but the biscuits are much denser.
*Whole wheat pastry flour is my new best biscuit friend. I’ve had great results with 100% whole wheat pastry flour — truly as good as white flour. They’re the best biscuits we’ve had in our house in years, since I’ve been doing 1/2 and 1/2 with whole wheat for a while now.
Katie
Shauna says
Kelly – you’re a hoot!
Enjoy!!!
Shauna
Kelly says
Shauna, here’s my thought process…
“Well if Shauna makes seriously cheater biscuits, then I can make them, too, and my family will fall over with joy!”
Katie, I’ll have to go check out that tip on using bread heels!
Katie says
Using leftover veggies: keep a bag in the freezer for random steamed veggies leftover at dinner. Use it to throw in soups or make an entire cream of vegetable soup. I just posted on this and using bread heels last week at Kitchen Stewardship, in fact. 🙂
Katie
Shauna says
Kelly – can I confess to you that I make “seriously cheater” biscuits? Biscuits are one of our rare “white flour splurges”, but my husband and children all start getting VERY excited when there are biscuits on the table for dinner!
I’d love to share the recipe, but keep in mind – that if you make up these biscuits, you can probably eat a whole basket by yourself! (I can turn down quick breads, sugary treats, etc – but one of these biscuits fresh out of the oven slathered with a THICK spread of REAL BUTTER…. mmmmmmmmm…… hold me back! ha! 🙂 )
Shauna’s Cream Biscuits
2 c unbleached white flour
1 t sea salt
1 T baking powder
1 stick real butter
1 c raw milk (or cream)
Mix flour, salt, baking powder in a mixing bowl. Cut in butter (I do it by hand with a pastry cutter – I like the texture better than in the Bosch.) until the mixture resembles even crumbs. Pour in milk (or cream) and stir with a fork. Gather the dough into the middle of the bowl, and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead LIGHTLY 10 times. (When I say lightly – I mean with very little pressure…. the KEY to flakey,light biscuits is to handle the dough at a minimum – another reason why I like to do it by hand.). Gently press out to about half an inch thick. Cut biscuits. You can gather the remaining dough, knead 1x, then press and cut – but remember that with each subsequent pressing, you’re handling the dough more – so try to be gentle.
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes (I usually check at 10 minutes, but let them go another 2…. you want them lightly browned on top.)
These biscuits are mile-high, super flakey, and MOIST. Slather on butter, homemade apple butter, raw honey, etc. I also make biscuits and homeade sausage gravy once a month for a Saturday morning “treat breakfast”.
(Oh – I hope it’s okay to post a contraband recipe…… it’s one of my compromises, atleast it’s got real butter and cream!)
Kelly – I loved your leftover ideas! These are great examples to help me think “outside the box” to turn leftovers into completely new meals!
Shauna
KristenM says
Sue — You CAN buy sprouted flour, though you’re more likely to find it online than at a local store.
Kelly — I’ve had luck with 100% whole wheat flour when I soak it overnight in buttermilk. It makes the texture really light, like white flour was added. Definitely worth a try!
Sue E. says
First a little comment. If you still have the dreaded aluminum jelly roll pans like me (although I have one stone pan from Pampered Chef), you can use unbleached parchment paper!!
Now a question: Kelly, can one actually purchase sprouted whole wheat flour, or do we need to sprout our berries and then grind it ourselves (I don’t have a grinder). Usually, I just soak my regular flour for recipes the night before but it would be great to buy already sprouted flour….
Thanks!
Sue E.