Thank you, Armando. I want the extra details because getting the technique is usually my concern, especially with baking. And I’ve never made biscuits from scratch.
-xtien
Biscuits genuinely scare me. As a Southerner, I think flaky buttermilk biscuits are supposed to be encoded in my DNA, but my attempts toward that end have failed spectacularly (my gf would add that they were “just fine” and that I’m “being ridiculous”). It really, really frustrates me, but I’m still plugging away at it.
So a recipe like this–they’re essentially drop biscuits, so none of the awful cutting in of frozen butter and lard and chilling and folding and chilling and folding and cutting and chilling–is a lot easier to get a handle on. It took a few tries, but I’m VERY content with how it’s gone!
Best of luck to you and the kid :-D
Tman
3303
I’ve been working on biscuits for the better part of 2 decades. About 5 or so years ago, I stumbled upon what I was missing when I was short on regular flour & substituted in half of whole wheat flour. It was amazing.
Recipe:
[edit]
Yield: 24 biscuits. 3 biscuits per serving. 381 calories per serving - and worth every calorie ;-)
You can cut recipe in half if you have a small group.
[/edit]
INGREDIENTS
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole grain wheat flour
6 tbls butter - no salted
6 tbls shortening
2 tsp salt
6 tsp baking powder
approx 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (can substitute 1% milk)
INSTRUCTIONS
Turn oven onto 450 degrees. While it’s heating up…
Mix dry ingredients, Cut in butter and shortening till it’s a crumbly mixture (like cornmeal). Make a well inside and pour in 1/2 the milk, mixing with a fork. Continue adding milk in small doses until all the dry ingredients form into a ball (quit adding milk once it forms a ball)
Next steps are very critical:
Don’t overly knead! Just mix it together by hand a few times until it’s a large consistent ball. Place onto a lightly floured surface and roll to approx 1/2-3/4" thick. Using a 2" biscuit cutter, cut out circles - but take care not to twist as your cutting. This will seal the edges.
Place biscuits adjacent to each other on a non-greased cookie sheet - sides should be touching, but don’t jam them together.
Place in oven, bake 13-15 minutes, enjoy!
NOTES
Sometimes, when the timer goes off, the inner biscuits may not be completely done…take the ones on the outside, spread the ones on the inside around a bit so they’re not touching & leave in the oven (while it’s cooling down - don’t keep at at 450) for another 2-3 minutes.
I know the feeling. My grandmother made the most awesome dumplings, and would never share her recipe with anyone, not even her own daughters. The art is lost now :(
Sadly, the link just takes me to the main PepperPlate page (though you did inspire me to finally start an account there–looks cool!). Would love to read the recipe if you have it anywhere else, though, Tman :)
My paternal grandmother, on the Cajun side of things, had a little wooden box filled with faded, spackled notecard-recipes. My female cousins got that thing–along with most of her kitchen gear. One now lords the old recipes over the rest of us at Xmas/Thanksgiving when the family manages to get together :)
Tman
3306
Darn, I was hoping Pepperplate would show you the recipe. I’ve copy/pasted it in above.
Many thanks! Looking forward to trying it :)
So, the first of three beer-based dishes went down tonight as we spend [part of] the weekend celebrating [some of] Great Britain’s cuisine!
Beer-battered fried cod, hand-made french fries, from-a-bottle tartar and ketchup, and a healthy heaping of mint-and-lemon green peas!
AKA, Fish n Chips wif sum Mushy Peas, mum
Not terribly easy to come by in the states. . . and no pickled eggs, either!
You’ll be truly scandalized by the “bangers” on the docket for tomorrow, I assure you :)
So, on that note. . . bangers and mash!
Lacking proper British sausages, I went with some relatively plain bratwurst. Fried 'em in olive oil, tossed in some garlic, oregano, and parsley, then poured on a bottle of Highland Brewing Co’s Oatmeal Stout and braised 'em in the oven for 20m.
The mash is just plain old russets with some butter, cream, and white pepper. The onion gravy’s got caramelized onions, salt/pepper, chicken broth, parsley, and flour as a thickener, plus a splash of the braising liquid from the brats.
And, ya know, the same ol’ mushy peas from last night!
I’ve been considering doing Mark Bittman’s bangers and mash recipe myself, but my stumbling block was that I didn’t have a potato masher. That was fixed yesterday for the making of refried beans to go into some breakfast burritos (from the Bittman book, of course), so I will have to get to that soon.
Speaking of the burritos, they were quite tasty. I didn’t get photos because I was cooking with my friend, but it basically was - chop up some bacon, start that cooking in the frying pan, chop up a small onion and grate a potato (for homemade hash browns - had to get a grater too, both utensils were acquired at Ikea) and add those to the bacon, then while that cooks crack open 4 eggs and whisk those together with some salt and pepper and then pour that in, cook a couple more minutes and decant into a bowl, then cook up a can worth of pinto beans with some garlic and cayenne and mash those as they cook. Crisp some tortillas (either in the broiler or on a gas burner, depending on your type of stove), grate some monterey jack, and combine the lot in the tortillas. Squeeze a lime onto the filling and enjoy. Certainly more work than nuking something out of the freezer, but when you’ve got time, worth it.
That gravy looks lovely in the picture.
How do you like to cook your potatoes? I love mashed potatoes so much, but have a hard time getting them just right. I don’t want to buy a ricer, so if that’s your answer, woe is me. I like some lumps in my potatoes. But, again, that might be the problem.
How do you go about it? And if I’m ever in NC, can I come over for dinner?
I think the sausages look great too. I love making sausages because they always turn out great because I bother to cook them two ways, as you have. And most folks don’t seem to get that. It’s funny how a simple two-tier cooking method for something like this (or chicken parts, for heaven’s sake) brings out so much more flavor in the food and yet so few people seem to get that.
Anyway. Blah blah. Tell me about your potatoes.
-xtien
P.S. A friend on FB recently visited Edinburgh and they went to a place called Nando’s and posted a picture of them at the meal. Of all the food on the table (ignoring the people, as I do), the peas stood out. She said it was a dish called Macho Peas, which are “they are peas with smashed peas, parsley, mint and chili.” They looked so good. And your mushy peas reminded me of her recent picture.
[quote=“ChristienMurawski, post:3313, topic:50840, full:true”]How do you like to cook your potatoes? I love mashed potatoes so much, but have a hard time getting them just right. I don’t want to buy a ricer, so if that’s your answer, woe is me. I like some lumps in my potatoes. But, again, that might be the problem.
How do you go about it? And if I’m ever in NC, can I come over for dinner?
I think the sausages look great too. I love making sausages because they always turn out great because I bother to cook them two ways, as you have. And most folks don’t seem to get that. It’s funny how a simple two-tier cooking method for something like this (or chicken parts, for heaven’s sake) brings out so much more flavor in the food and yet so few people seem to get that.
Anyway. Blah blah. Tell me about your potatoes.
[/quote]
The potatoes started life as two big (1lb each, or near enough) russets. Peeled, chunked into eighths, and boiled in salted water around 12-15 minutes. Drained, then back in and smashed with a wire potato masher. Slowly mixed in about 4 tbsp of unsalted butter, 1/2 tsp white pepper, 1 tsp salt, and about 1/4 - 1/3 cup each heavy cream and milk. Mashed all of that in until most sizeable chunks of potato were gone, then whipped very briefly with a wooden spoon while adding a smidge more salt I realized I needed. I don’t like gummy potatoes, so I’m sure a ricer would be nice, but I don’t have one for now.
Thanks for the kind words, and you’re absolutely invited if you’re ever in this neck of the woods! Oh, and thanks for sharing the story. I’ve heard good things about Nando’s and would love to go someday!
I feel bad asking for more details when you’re so good about providing details–I really do love that–but do you start them in cold water and bring them up to a boil?
-xtien
In this case, I did not–boiled first, then added. And the time range does have some wiggle room for size of potatoes and other factors. The old knife test (does a sharp knife slide in and back out of the potatoes without any resistance) is the final arbiter of when they’re done, but I’d rather have em be a little overdone than under, tbh. These probably coulda come out about a minute earlier, for instance, but I got hung up rejiggering my oven racks to fit the Dutch oven in there and couldn’t really get to em on time.
I mean, really ideally, the potatoes should have started about ten minutes later to finish with other dishes, but live and learn!
Not bad for 1am on a work night :D
This post constitutes an invitation to come over, right?
So after reading about biscuits in this thread, I got home and my wife had made some.
My wife has the biscuit game on point:
Which look like this when you bust em open:
I could ask the same about all the tasty looking stuff you post :D
