Drop Biscuits – And How Your Mama Did It Just Right
This is a 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. 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 (the same recipe, prepared so that there is more of the crispy part), they assured me that the drop biscuits with apple butter were their new favorite.
Hoe cake recipes vary widely. A lot of people make it with corn meal or use more traditional methods of preparation (actually cooking it on a hoe). Every now and then a reader will respond to a recipe telling me it just isn’t like their mother’s. Sometimes they will go so far as to tell me I am doing something flat out wrong because the recipe varies in some way from how their Mama did it. It’s these comments that stand out the most to me because my heart just aches for the folks that say them. I understand there is a lot more to what they are saying than ingredients and preparation methods.
“It’s not like Mama’s” is not so much about missing the food as it is missing the person.
I feel the same way even though I am fortunate enough to still have my mother with me. She was the one who taught me how to cook and as a result, I cook just exactly like she does. Anyone could taste a dish made by Mama next to one of mine and not be able to tell a bit of difference. Still, my cooking to me just isn’t Mama’s.
I want to make one thing as clear as possible : How your Mama made it is the right way. No one will ever cook for you like your Mama did and I’m surely not here to try. But on the same token, Southern Plate is a singular website run by a singular person and as a result, when I bring you a recipe I’m going to bring it to you how My Mama made it, which is the only right way for me.
I know how much a Mama can mean to a person and I hope I can help bring back some of those memories from time to time, maybe by telling you a little of my childhood or my mother’s childhood that reminds you of your own in some way. I hope when this happens that it brings a smile to your face and most importantly, I hope when you make a recipe of one of yours or my loved ones, that it helps to bring a bit of their spirit into your kitchen again.
Your Mama will always be a better cook than you, me, Martha or Julia. There was never any competition.
At the end of this post in the comments, I’d really like for you to share any memories you’d like about your mamas and how they cooked for you. Tell me about your Mama’s heart, her sense of humor, lessons she taught, or about how good it made you feel when she wrapped her arms around you.
Most of all, tell me how your Mama did it just right.
For this, you’ll need: Self rising flour, vegetable shortening, and milk.
Isn’t it amazing how all of the best Southern recipes have the fewest and most simple of ingredients?
Just think about all of the food channels and fancy cookbooks touting “quick and easy” that have ingredient lists a mile long!
All we need to do is look to the old days when folks used what they had on hand.
If you’d like to know how to make your own self rising flour, just visit my Frequently Asked Questions page.
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.
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.
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 milk.
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.
Katy calls these “grumpy biscuits” because of how they look when baked.
She sure does love to eat them though!
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.
Now 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.
Serve warm with butter, jelly, or homemade apple butter! YUM!
Ingredients
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
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 milk 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.
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Be sure to try the original recipe, too! Click here.
Happiness is like potato salad,
when shared with others – it becomes a picnic!
Submitted by Southern Plate reader, Kathi.
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Now,~settles in and leans forward with interest~ tell me bout yer Mama! Can’t wait to read! As always, feel free to talk amongst yourselves as well. If you’d like to reply to someone else’s comment, just click “reply” beneath what they wrote.
Gratefully,
Christy 
Posted by Christy Jordan
on Aug 15 2009. Filed under Breads.
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[...] drop biscuits for the kids’ snack and they were so good. I was glad to find the recipe at Southern Plate. While you’re at it, you might want to make some crock pot apple butter to go along with [...]
My mom would have my breakfast ready so I could eat it when the kids on Romper Room had milk and cookies. She was the best!
My Mama also made her biscuits in a biscuit bowl that she used for only that purpose, making a well in the middle, adding shortening and milk to make the dough and pinching it off into biscuits. If I close my eyes,I can still see her do this even though she has been gone for 15 years. What I loved the most with those biscuits was her Tomato Gravy. Here’s her recipe.
Mama’s Tomato Gravy
This special family recipe is truly a taste of Cajun country where folks are already sitting at the table drinking coffee and eating breakfast by the time the rooster crows. Mama (Patsy Paul) made countless batches of biscuits and tomato gravy in her lifetime. I miss her every day. When I’ve had a rough day and need to feel close to her, I come home and make biscuits and tomato gravy and I’m reminded of her love for her family and for cooking. I’m sure she learned to make this from her Mother, Carmen Inez Shirley. I know it’s just simple biscuits and gravy but for me this is “the dish” that puts my feet back under my Mama’s table.
4 tablespoons bacon or sausage grease
3 rounded tablespoons flour
2 cups water approximately
½ small can tomato paste (about 3 oz.)
Salt and pepper to taste (not too much salt)
Hot buttermilk biscuits
In a skillet, stir flour into grease over medium-high heat. Let flour cook and brown, keep stirring, don’t let it burn. When roux has browned, pour water into skillet, while stirring with a whisk. Whisk in tomato paste until well blended; when gravy begins to thicken reduce heat to low. Add salt and pepper to taste. You may need to add a little more water if gravy becomes too thick.
Serve with love over hot buttermilk biscuits along with bacon or sausage for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. Morning, noon or night, you’ll feel the love because your heart and your tummy will be full.
Some folks use chopped fresh or canned crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce in place of the tomato paste.
I was about to cry reading this and thinking of my mama and my granny. Both were great cooks and my granny taught mama how to make the tomato gravy. When I came to Ky and mentioned it, they never had heard of it. I guess Granny made it when she didnt have milk to make the gravy. It was good. My mama is 91 and in a nursing home now. When I go see her, the first thing she wants to know is have I had anything to eat today. She imagines she still cooks but hasnt for several years now.
These posts make me want to get in the kitchen and make the biscuits and gravy..
Whenever I fix rice,I always fix extra……I always fix extra cause my Mama always fixed extra…..she taught me to put butter and sugar on that rice and it was always such a treat, I was lucky enough to have my mother until I was about 19 and then she was diagnosed with Alzheimers and mentally she wasn’t really there anymore…she was sick for 8 years and passed away when I was 27, we never had the chance to be friends which I had so looked forward to. But every time I fix rice , I fix extra and I think of my Mama like she used to be and I’ve passed the rice treat on to my own kids and they love to hear stories about my Mama and my childhood and I am so thankful I have the memories I do.
Michelle, I am so sorry to hear about your Mom but what a gift to have such beautiful memories!!
My Mama invented “shoe box chicken”! When we were little on weekends we would go for “day trips” with our grandma and aunt and have a picnic (I know now cause we couldn’t afford to eat in a restaurant). She would get up early and instead of being woke to the smell of bacon frying we would smell chicken and know it was gonna be a great day. No tupperware back then so to keep the chicken warm, she would line a shoe box with foil and carefully stack that fried chicken in, roll the foil over the top, put the lid on and tie it with a shoe string like a christmas package, load up the box in the picnic basket with cans of pork-in-beans, with forks to eat from and fruit cocktail with spoons and wash cloths for napkins. No paper plates for Mama! We would find our favorite spot (sometimes by car and sometimes by foot) and have our wonderful shoe box chicken. We would play a while and then go back home with our forks, spoons, greasy napkins and a warm feeling of love.
What a wonderful memory!!
[...] Drop Biscuits – And How Your Mama Did It Just Right [...]
Momma used to make these a lot. We called them “dinosaur biscuits,” and she served them with hot syrup (sugar and water boiled). We opened a hot biscuit, threw a slab of butter on top, and poured the hot syrup over the butter. These are fork-and-knife biscuits, for sure.
My mom would do the same only with pancakes. The hot “homemade” syrup just made the butter melt that much faster on the pancake…..awwww…..I miss her………
This calls for shortening, but I dont have any, can I use butter or canola oil instead??
I think butter will work just fine. The texture might be ever so slightly different but if anything it will be better
Thanks!! Im making them tonight!!
At our house a hot biscuit like this would be served with syrup and fresh sweet cream….soppin’ good! Wish I had some right now.
These are my daughters favorites. She calls them Rocks because they look like it. And we make them big. Christy, I am so lazy, I use Bisquick. Now I gotta go make some. Think I’ll had a handful or two of shredded cheese to the dough. MMM-MMM-MMM-MMM-MMM
Well, You taught me how to make ‘hoe cakes’ now I find I can make biscuits the exact same way, can’t wait to fix them for supper tomorrow.
Heck, I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow I will whip up a batch after Church tonight.
I am a senior citizen but I am not to old to learn new things..
Thank You so much
I just think we are never too old to learn Mary and I hope I never get to that point where I think I can’t learn something new.
I love what you’ve said about our Mamas! Mine is 90 (or as she says “almost 91″) and still cooks biscuits every day!
You wanted to know about our mamas, about how they cooked for us and about their hearts, but you don’t have enough space for me to tell you about that. I’ll just say that her heart is so full of love that THAT is the reason she still cooks every day, at almost 91. People who know her know that they can go by and have a biscuit and bacon almost any time. Her life has been one of sacrifice for others and I’m blessed to call her Mama.
Thanks for the wonderful things you’ve allowed us share with one another.
I make my drop biscuits in a cast iron “biscuit maker”; heavy, heavy cast iron; it’s round with 8 round biscuit “holes” to put the dough into; they rise more like a cupcake, instead of spread out; which ever way you make ‘em:cast iron biscuit maker, or an old cast iron skillet or on a baking sheet, they are wonderful. P.S., I cut in olive oil and/or cold butter, instead of shortening.
LOVE your column and your face book thingies. Thank you!
I’m blessed to still have my mother with me as well. In fact she reads all your posts and loves your recipes as much as I do. And she’ll read this message I’m sure and laugh at me some more when she calls. I remember well the day she taught me to make biscuits. Mine turned out much “grumpier” than hers. And I was disturbed enough by that to ask why my biscuits look like they have arthritis or something!! So for years I would hear “some of your arthritic biscuits sure would go good with this”. Of course I remember this every single time I make biscuits now, and it never fails to make me smile. Thanks Mom, for one of my favorite memories <3
All of these great comments about you Mothers makes me miss mine. I lost her 10 years ago she was almost 87. When we were little (11 of us kids) she made gravy and biscuits, oatmeal, bacon, and sausage every morning for breakfast. sometimes she would cut up bologna and put it in the gravy or cut up tomatoes in it. My Mom loved to cook and to bake. Everybody wanted to come to our house to eat because my Mom made 3 big meals a day. We never knew we were poor cause we ate better than anyone we knew. She taught me to cook b4 I started school. I would love to spend 1 more day in the kitchen with my Mother.
Thanks you Christy for posting some of the recipes my Mom made while I was growing up.
Hi Christy, These biscuits reminded me of a fun story I like to tell about a big family dinner with my husband’s aunts, uncles, and cousins in Winchester, TN. They had a big affair everytime we came to visit as if we were the king and queen of something, but that is a different story. Those aunts and cousins were the queens and princesses of country cooking for me. So like you.
))
The biscuits were amazingly delicious. I asked who made them and Eddie’s cousin said in her wonderfully southern voice, “I did.”
I asked her for the recipe and here it is. Christy, you must read it in your best southern voice for full effect.
“Well, you take a cup a’ self-risin’ flour, a hen egg of crisco, and just enough milk to make it right.”
Thirty-nine years later, I am still using that recipe, but it will never be as good from my kitchen as it is from Patti’s.
I LOVE it Janie!!!!!
We do the exact same thing, but make them into muffins instead of biscuits! They are wonderful!!!!!!
These stories remind me of “how it went” in our family. I could make a meat loaf that everyone would think was good but I would say that my mother’s was always better. My mother would say that she never could make her’s as good as my grandmother’s. And when my grandmother was still alive, she’d tell you that her’s wasn’t as good as her mother’s! My great-grand mother lived to be 95 years old & my grandmother was 104 when she passed away. We were very blessed to have our good cooks around for a very long time!!!
You were blessed indeed Jo-Ellen!!
How much oil is in the bottom of the pan? I needed enough to be able to spoon some on top…that caused almost a frying effect on the biscuits. They were still very good, just a bit concerned about the oil levels in the pan… I used a pizza pan and it worked fine.
i loved these. i added cheese and my pickled jalapenos to a batch for my husband and they were a hit. but i was thinking that next time i’d try adding some salt. how much do you think would be a good amount for this recipe?
When me and my little sister where in elementary school. Our momma would get up extra early on the first day of school and make us breakfast. What always made it special was she would break out the her wedding china from when she married my dad. I really need to give her an extra squeeze for that next time I hug her.
so true, our mothers do live on in our memories.