Drop Biscuits Recipe So Easy
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This Drop Biscuits recipe that is always considered a treat at my house, met with the same zeal as a dessert even though it is just a bread.
Similar to Hoe Cake
A variation on my Mama’s hoe cake, she often mixed up the same batter and made drop biscuits instead. When I first served hoe cake to my in laws, hot from the oven with generous helpings of homemade apple butter, they declared it a hit. They loved the crispy outer layer and soft as clouds biscuit inside. But the next day when I made them drop biscuits with buttermilk and they assured me that the drop biscuits with apple butter were their new favorite.
Recipe Ingredients:
- Self rising flour
- Vegetable shortening (I like to use Coconut oil these days but use what you want)
- Buttermilk (you can use regular milk if you like)
- Some vegetable oil for the pan
Isn’t it amazing how all of the best Southern recipes have the fewest and most simple of ingredients?
Now take your ugliest baking sheet, one with a bit of a lip around the edges, and pour some vegetable oil on it.
You just need enough to coat the bottom.
Use Your Ugliest Baking Pan 🙂
You know that really ugly baking sheet you have that you make sure you don’t use when company comes? That is the one we want for this. Mine is so old and ugly I covered it in foil so you wouldn’t see! Bless it’s little heart, its a workhorse of a pan though! I normally do not cover my pan in foil so don’t feel that you have to.
Place that baking pan in your oven while it preheats to get the oil good and hot.
Measure your flour into a bowl.
Add your shortening.
Cut your shortening into the flour by repeatedly pressing down with a fork and stirring it up a bit as you do so.
Long Tined Fork Does Just Fine
I’ve mentioned before that you can buy a fancy pastry cutter for this but I find a long tined fork works just as well and I don’t have one more thing to keep up with. Simple is better here at Bountiful.
It’ll look like this when you are done.
Now pour in your buttermilk.
I used the very last bit of milk I had for these drop biscuits! Been so busy lately I haven’t had time to get groceries.
Stir it up until you have a batter that is just a little softer than regular biscuit batter.
It will be lumpy but that is perfectly fine so don’t go frettin’ over it.
Drop globs by large spoonful onto heated baking sheet.
The oil should be hot enough to sizzle a little bit when you add the batter.
How Do I Get The Tops Crunchy?
Tilt your pan a bit until some of the heated oil pools in the corner and spoon a bit of that oil over each biscuit.
This will get us nice and crunchy tops!
Here are our drop biscuits all ready to go.
These are pretty good sized ones and this recipe ended up making about eight of them.
If you make them a little smaller you could get a dozen.
Bake at 425 until golden brown, 10-15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1 cup buttermilk any milk will do
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening I used coconut oil but use what you like
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425. Pour a thin layer of oil to cover the bottom of a large baking pan and place in oven to heat.
- Cut shortening into flour well. Pour buttermilk in and stir until wet – add a little more milk if needed.
- Drop by large spoonfuls onto well heated pan and spoon a bit of hot oil over each one.
- Bake for ten to fifteen minutes or until browned.
Nutrition
You may also enjoy these biscuit recipes:
Sausage Biscuit with Cheese Southern Style
Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe Light and Buttery
Garlic Cream Biscuits with Bacon Gravy
Happiness is like potato salad,
when shared with others – it becomes a picnic!
Submitted by Southern Plate reader, Kathi.
we love drop biscuits in our house. (they are my “I forgot to make biscuits” biscuits) ~_* You have got to try them with a bit of garlic and herb seasoning (salt free kind) and shredded cheddar. Perfect for soups!
Love your site!
Amanda, that sounds like the Cheddar Bay biscuits they have at Red Lobster! Love those! Yum!
It tastes like them as well. ~_*
I’ve had ’em this way also. YUM! You are SO right!
The first time I tried to make my mama’s biscuits, they came out totally flat and hard as rocks. That’s the day I learned the very important difference between “flour” and “self-rising flour.”
MOther is such a good cook … I still think one of the reasons my husband married me was to get to eat her good southern cookin’. (He’s from New York – he had no idea what he was missing. You should have seen him at his first family reunion – hog heaven!)
My sisters and I are still trying to perfect Mother’s cornbread dressing. And she makes that same Vanilla Wafer cake you have on your website. OH, that is a good cake. (yes, her mother made it before her …)
I loved your story about self rising versus regular! lol It’s a good thing you learned that early on!
I also dearly love cornbread dressing. I like to make it year round, it’s such a treat! Have you looked at my Grandmother’s recipe for slow cooker chicken and dressing? It tastes exactly like my great grandmother’s but with easier prep and baking since you leave it in the slow cooker all day. You can even assemble it the night before, put your crock in the fridge, then place it in your crock pot base the next morning.
Here is the link in case you are interested. It may not be your mother’s but if you are looking for the recipe and it is close, it might help! We sure do like it!
https://www.southernplate.com/2008/07/crock-pot-chicken-and-dressing-tutorial.html
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
We have the same plate!…lol
My Momma is still with me too. I guess my favorite recipe of my Momma’s that me and all my siblings love is her Mississippi Mud Pie. That is sooo yummy! I’ve never tried making it tho. I’ve seen her bake it for years, but just never have for my family.
I’ve always loved the way my Momma would play with my hair. Her hands are always soft and makes me wanna go to sleep when she does that. Anyway, I guess that’s all I can think of to tell ya about my momma! Tell us about your Momma, Christy!
Oh goodness, tell you about my Mama?
She did everything perfectly, everything. Once, when I was five, we were getting ready to go somewhere and I didn’t listen to Mama and shut the car door by myself. She always insisted that we let her or Daddy shut it but I didn’t listen that one time.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, I shut it on my thumb and broke it.
But I don’t remember it hurting so much as I remember getting to ride in the front seat, sitting in Mamas lap with my head on her chest, all the way to the hospital. Her shirt was white with little blue flowers on it and she was warm and soft. Then I remember in the evenings, sitting in the kitchen with just Mama while I soaked my thumb in warm water every night after the supper dishes had already been done and my brother and sister were on to other things.
~smiles~ Who would have thought I would remember a broken thumb with such fondness? It was wonderful.
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
I never thought of using the oil to make a crispier drop biscuit. I’ll have to try that next time.
I know what you mean about Mama’s cooking. I love it when she comes for a visit and makes all of my favorites. But even if your cooking isn’t quite like my Mama’s, it is still pretty darn close!
Sending you hugs, Christy! have a great day!
It’s always a pleasure to see you, Heather! I know just what you mean. To this day I refuse to make myself a ham and cheese omelet or a coconut pie because those are things MAMA makes for me!
lol
You have a good one, too!
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
My mom always made the best pies, cakes, and just about everything. Even though she was of Irish decent, she made GREAT Italian food. She made delicious pepper relish every summer for years when I was growing up — I’ve never tasted anything like it since. I miss my mom and her good cooking. 🙁
Sadly when she passed away, my sister got all her stuff, including her cookbooks and recipes…
Diane in PA
Nicely put Christy! I always say folks need to make southern cooking there own. No one way is ever the only way!
Amen, Mary!!!
~hugs you~
Still drinking tea courtesy of you!
Thanks for sharing your recipe. You are right biscuits are a very personal thing, especially for southerner’s. My family’s recipe is kind of a cross between a rolled and a drop, you make it in your hand. http://southerngracegourmet.com/butter-palm-biscuits/ Its very very messy, but worth the effort for us!
All that handling the dough puts more love in it! Thanks for sharing!
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
My mom’s biscuits were sort of a combination of Christy’s drop biscuits and Angelia’s butter-palm biscuits. She kept the self rising flour in a big plastic bowl with a lid. She sifted some of the flour then dropped in a blob of Crisco (she said “the size of an egg”, worked the Crisco into the flour then dug out a little hole in the bowl of flour to pour in buttermilk. She stirred it around with her hands “until it feels right.” For each biscuit she would put the dough in her fist and squeeze it a certain way so that a little dough ball popped out between her forefinger and thumb, then she’d roll that out in her palm like in Angelia’s recipe. As many times as I watched her and even asked for her secrets, I never could figure out how she could do it without using up all the flour in the bowl. When she was done, she would sift the remaining flour again and throw out any little little hard bits that wouldn’t go through the sifter. Watching those mysterious hand movements was like watching magic. No wonder I could never make her biscuits. I have to stick to drop biscuits. I CAN do that!