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.
How about a cooking story about my grandmother who passed just a few months ago at age 88?
My mama was a working mama, and I stayed with a sitter up until I went to school (and they were a second family to me). Anyway, the sitter usually made me breakfast in the mornings after I got there and for her own school age girls and her husband who worked nights and got home in time for breakfast. Anyway. All’s she (and my mama) had ever made, to my recollection, had been canned biscuits. (I know – I was SO deprived right? LOL)
Well, I always stayed the night with Mammy (my dad’s mom) on Saturday nights, and she offered to make biscuits for me one Sunday morning. I was all excited (I LIKED canned biscuits). I went off and did whatever 3 or 4 year olds do while she made them, and finally she called me in to eat.
I got up to the kitchen table, and my little face fell. THESE weren’t biscuits. I’d never seen homemade biscuits before. And I refused to eat them. They were larger than canned and they were sort of flat looking and browned. They weren’t small, fluffy, and doughy looking! I didn’t realize until many many years later that I probably hurt her feelings at first. But she “got” little kids, always had, and I’m sure she figured out what the problem was. Knowing her, she probably retold that story over and over through the years!
Christy,
I’ve not posted before, but felt I had to after reading your post. The last year my mother was here for Christmas (1988), she leaned on the cabinet & made biscuits with one hand. She knew it would be her last Christmas celebration with us & wanted to make us biscuits one last time. Those were the best biscuits she EVER made!
Now I’m the mom making memories for my family – AWESOME!
I enjoy your recipes. Thank you!
Hey, Christy! You know we love to talk about our mamas! Mine was THE BEST COOK EVER! Who knew yours was, too?! We can’t help but love our mamas when they have spent so much time loving us. Mine was promoted to heaven in ’98, and I’m hoping someone is cooking for her, for a change. She had a quiet and humble spirit, a true servant’s heart and I look for the day when we can be together again. But about this cooking thing, whenever I am all out of sorts and just need some REAL food, I long for Mama’s roast beef, mashed potatoes, butter beans or peas and biscuits. Just doesn’t get any better than that. And there is absolutely no way I could ever cook the way she did. Thanks, Christy, for sharing your family with all of us. God bless you all! Have a great day!
MaryC
Growing up my mama made drop biscuits when she didn’t feel like rolling them out in her hands. I still do the same with my family. The only difference is my daughter (5 yrs. old) calls them mountain biscuits because she thought they looked like mountain peaks when she was younger. It stuck and now nobody calls them drop biscuits anymore.
Hi again Christy,
All our mothers are treasured in so many unique and individual memories regardless of whether they were a southerner, northerner, westerner, easterner, or midwesterner; they are all special in their own way! Mother, Ma, Mom, Mommy, Mamma, and Nanny are only a few of my own mother’s names and she was a saint among women! I have 39 cousins, all of whom think I had the best mother in the world, and they are all right! My mother passed away just this February at age 89 (how she wanted to reach 90) and her birthday is tomorrow, August 17th. My mother was so special in so many ways, I couldn’t even begin to describe them all, but will tell you just a little about her expertise in the kitchen! Everything she baked and cooked was entirely “from scratch” and was absolutely scrumptous! All her wonderful recipes came from her mother and grandmothers and her mother-in-law…raised biscuits, raised donuts, breads, soups, stews, pies, cakes, roasts, absolutely the best bread dressing with sausage and celery stuffed into a huge turkey dripping with juice, puddings, cookies, and fudge…the best potato salad in the world…She never measured things out, just knew how much of an ingredient to use, just as her mom and grandmothers did. About 10 years ago she tested all our favorite receipes out, jotted down how much of each ingredient she used, and then hand wrote all our favorite recipes down on index cards and included them all in a beautiful binder, one each for myself and my sister. It was accompanied by a matching “Grateful Journal” for us to write down and remember all the things we were grateful for rather than dwell on the things we didn’t have…The absolute very best gift I have ever received. My mother saved every gift, letter, card, or momento that was ever given to her by anyone…treasuring them all! Everything she did, sewing, crocheting, needlepoint, cooking, baking, painting, wallpapering, cleaning, and especially doting on her daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and my dad, she did with a heart full of love! She was a very, very special person, a truly unique and wonderful mother. The thing I am truly grateful for today, is that she was MY mother and that I have so many special memories of her graciousness and goodness! Thanks for letting me share, Christy.
All your recipes remind me of my mother’s food! When I was around 5, I told my mother I wanted to make a cake, so she set everything out on the counter and told me to go ahead! If I had dropped that cake, it woulda bounced sky high! But she made everybody eat a slice. I’m a little better now, thanks to her gentle guidance. She made the best Chicken and Dumplings, and cakes and pies of all types, and I’ve never had sweet tea that tasted as good as hers.
She’s still with us, but she doesn’t cook as often as she used to. But she made sure we all knew how to feed ourselves and our families!
My Mamaw raised us. So, everything I know I learned from Mamaw. Remember that in the Bible Paul called us to be always in prayer. Well she was the only one I have ever know who was. She never wore jewelry (I have my belly pierced), cut her hair (mine is short) or wore pants (I loved short shorts – before I gave birth!). But she was the most fun person in the world. I patted biscuits before I knew patty-cake. I learned how to fry potatoes and mercy…no one fries okra like she did. But, I learned that no matter what I cook for my family, I have to put some of her love in it. She loved Jesus and her family in that order. She died when I was 18…but she had Alzheimer’s…so she left us about 4 years before that…I miss her every day. The other day my daughter told me she didn’t mean to do something, and I swear I channeled Mamaw when I said, “but did you mean not to?”