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.
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………
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!!
This story is precious!!! Should be in a book!
Thank you! It’s actually in my first book!
I’m in tears right now. I have that same memory only we were going to the beach with my parents who are both gone now. Mom fried the chicken and dad made potato salad,drop biscuits and lemonade. We had oranges for dessert. Oranges are still my favorite friut and beach picnics are still my favorite outing. Thanks mom and dad for terrific memories.
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 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..
I have been looking for a recipe for Tomato Gravy similar to this that my mother used to make. But seems like she used cornmeal in it. Can anyone help me with this. Thanks
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!
God bless you Christy! Look what you have started here with your request for memories of mama. I’m sure your mama’s real proud of you! These have about to made me cry . . .
My mother is 83, an excellent cook, just retired a few months ago and still spoils me and cooks for me sometimes. I’m almost 60 and I sure hope I grow up to be half the woman she is . . . .
I tried to make these biscuits – followed the instructions….they baked to a golden brown but fell apart before I could get them to my mouth. What did I do wrong? PLEASE HELP
I hope someone will give me a suggestion. I’d really like to do this and get the desired results!
Hey Lee! I’m thinking, off the top of my head, that you should add a bit more milk. Your dough should be kind of like a lumpy cake batter. Sounds like your flour might have been the culprit (not you). Let me know what you think and we’ll figure this out together!
Gratefully
Christy
My wife tells me that I’m on restriction. I’m a diabetic and my blood sugar soared to 268….it usually is 115 or so….didn’t help that I ate 5…LOL – even though they fell apart, they were GOOD. i PROMISED MY WIFE THAT IF WE TRY AGAIN, I’LL BE GOOD….