Buttermilk Biscuits

Instagram: a bite of a buttermilk biscuit, with organic strawberry jam

I opened the refridgerator this morning, anxious to satisfy a sudden craving for a warm breakfast. On days like this one, cold milk and cereal just wouldn’t cut it. But after making my coffee, I encountered a serious problem. To my horror, I discovered that I had completely run out of eggs. With that, my vision of a warm piece of toast, slathered with butter and topped with a poached egg was shattered. An evil voice spoke, suggesting I venture to the corner marketplace and quickly make a purchase of those conventional, non-organic, non-pastured eggs. But no. I held my conviction. No egg is always better than a plain egg from a cage.

With this essential missing ingredient, many baked goods or warm breakfasts were instantly deemed impossible. Frittata, omelets, pancakes or even muffins were out of the picture. Thankfully though, there is one exception to the egg for a savory breakfast. When you are faced with an eggless fridge, you can easily bust out with a set of warm, flakey buttermilk biscuits.

“But Emily, who the heck keeps buttermilk in their fridge at all times?” Listen, if you do not keep buttermilk in your fridge, then you should really start reconsidering your priorities in the kitchen. Because buttermilk ranks right up there with flour and water. And bittersweet chocolate. Buttermilk adds tang to chocolate cakes, richness to dressings and flavor to pancakes, corn bread and biscuits. You can even use it to marinade poultry.

Once you start adding it to your cooking, you might have trouble holding back. So, I always have quality, organic buttermilk from grass-fed cows in my fridge.

Buttermilk biscuit dough, pending a dose of buttermilk

These buttermilk biscuits can be made in 20 minutes flat. It takes about 5 minutes to measure out all the ingredients and 15 minutes to bake everything up. Seriously, they are that simple. The very best part is that there’s no need to roll out the dough and cut out perfect round biscuits.  These are no fuss, drop buttermilk biscuits.

Call them rustic and charming, these biscuits are made for lazy mornings to simply accompany a warm cup of coffee. Maybe it’s the ease of their preparation, or the fact that I incorporated buttermilk into my breakfast, but these biscuits were just plain delicious.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Recipe adapted from Epicurious

Makes 12 biscuits

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 cup buttermilk, chilled

Preheat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Then, using fingertips, rub 3/4 cup chilled butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

Add the buttermilk and stir until evenly moistened. Measure out 1/4 cup of dough for each biscuit, and drop biscuits onto a baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart.

Bake until biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly. Serve warm.