Cliff Notes: Dad’s Buttermilk Biscuits

Welcome to the second installment of Cliff Notes, authored by my favourite baker and my favourite Cliff – MY DAD! Dad is the inspiration behind the classics right here on the weblog.  You realize him and love him for his Chocolate Chip Cookies, his Buttermilk Pancakes, and he’s additionally baker of Buttermilk Biscuits that disappear so quick on the dinner desk, it’ll make your head spin.  Let’s right here how these excellent little biscuits got here to be from the person, the parable, the legend himself – Clifford Wilson. xo Pleasure

Assured Chef and Her Irresistibles

A Biscuit Yarn

My mom was a wonderful cook dinner. However she by no means measured something. In actual fact, we had no measuring cups or spoons, nor did we’ve got a mixer. Mom didn’t even personal a cookbook, and there have been no recipes she had written down. Our first cookbook was Betty Crocker’s Image Cook dinner E book that my sister, Dede, had bought. However by then, Mom had lengthy been braising dice steak that fell aside earlier than it hit the plate, and her slow-roasted leg of lamb may very well be eaten with no enamel. Certainly, Mom had been realizing her approach across the kitchen nigh on 30 years! From her luxurious gravies and sauces to her irresistible truffles and pies, she had them down!

Since early age in Tennessee and Arkansas, cooking for her father, her sickly mom and sisters, my mom used her eyes, fingers, and style to study the conduct of components once they’re introduced collectively. She developed a preciseness in textures; how dough felt to the contact, how batter dripped off a spoon, and the way all kinds of meals responded to warmth. Her absolute favourite ingredient was butter. In her opinion, butter made every part style higher. However she knew when to make use of it and when to not, particularly throughout the Nice Melancholy and World Conflict II when butter was rationed and different types of fats have been cheaper.

Procter & Gamble had an efficient advertising marketing campaign for its easy-to-use and versatile Crisco vegetable shortening. Tens of millions of bakers made their truffles, cookies, and pie crusts with this cheap product, even to at the present time. And shortening is a fundamental storeroom merchandise in foodservice for deep-frying in addition to for frying meals at house. Moreover utilizing Crisco, my mom used bacon grease left over from breakfast. Rising up, one in all my favourite meals was fried rooster and biscuits, which we had for supper on Sunday afternoons after church. Mom would scoop shortening and congealed bacon grease right into a forged iron skillet and warmth it up. Then she’d take rooster items that had been soaking in an egg and buttermilk tub in a single day within the fridge, and would double-dip them in salted, paprika-laced flour earlier than placing them within the sizzling oil. She’d reduce shortening and bacon grease into flour for her biscuits, too! When it was time to eat, I’d pull aside a sizzling fluffy biscuit, slather on some butter and cargo it up with fig jam constituted of the figs off the tree in our yard. Though I had simply gotten out of church, chowing down 3 or 4 of these mouth-watering biscuits had satisfied me that I had died and gone to heaven.

When Mom was aged, she continued to cook dinner southern-style, with the identical Nice Melancholy thriftiness; she continued to make use of shortening and bacon grease regardless of different dietary traits. And when it got here to her particular sauces and desserts, BUTTER, the culinary love of her life, all the time took heart stage. Once I began making biscuits, I may by no means duplicate hers, as a result of I by no means developed her “really feel” for the components; I all the time should measure every part. I created this biscuit recipe, made with all butter, in honor of my mom’s ardour for butter. These flaky unhealthy boys sit tall, and are improbable for breakfast, lunch and dinner! They make nice shortbread for dessert. Or add savory candy fillings to the shaggy dough—cheddar, dried figs, darkish chocolate chunks, something that pleases. And the way about this? Whenever you’re making cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner, crumble up these biscuits (as a substitute of utilizing bread crumbs) to combine with the crumbled cornbread. Wow! It takes stuffing to a complete new stage!

BTW: It gained’t damage my emotions in the event you sneak in a bit bacon grease.

Get pleasure from!

xo Cliff

Discover Dad’s Buttermilk Biscuit recipe right here!

And discover the primary installment of Cliff Notes, on Candy Potato Pie right here!