Nobody can deny the deliciousness of a flaky, buttery biscuit.
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Southern Biscuits
RECIPE COURTESY OF ALTON BROWN
Level: Easy
Total: 40 min
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 20 min
Yield: 1 dozen
Ingredients
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons shortening
1 cup buttermilk, chilled
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs. (The faster the better, you don’t want the fats to melt.) Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.
Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting. (Biscuits from the second pass will not be quite as light as those from the first, but hey, that’s life.)
Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15 to 20 minutes.
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Cook Southern Biscuits with Alton Brown | Good Eats | Food Network
[Music] okay so uh we’re both going to be starting with a soft winter wheat flour uh we’re not going to name brands but mommy prefers to use self rising flour that already has the leavening ingredients added in i have to admit i very often use it as well but for the sake of argument i’m going to be using all purpose flour today and i’m going to add the baking powder and the baking soda separately and we’re going to come back to more of those later you ready to start ready to start okay we’re going to start with phase one measuring i do it she doesn’t here we go she will be spooning out her flower while i will be precisely measuring my ingredients i use a digital scale that has what’s called a tear weight on it which means that i can slap a bowl on there and then basically subtract the weight of the bowl now my mangoes with two cups of flour and i basically do two only the my two cups of flour generally weighs out to about 10 ounces okay i’m going to go ahead and add four teaspoons of baking powder which is the same as one teaspoon plus one tablespoon now baking powder is interesting stuff because it’s balanced it holds both acid and alkaline so it will it can rise all by itself without any other chemical agents and i’m going to add about a quarter teaspoon of baking soda a tiny tiny little amount it’s going to give us a little bit better of a rise especially with the acid that’s in the buttermilk we’re using but the reason i also use a very small amount is that it will flavor things it’s got a lot of sodium in it and if you use a lot you’ll taste it you having a hard time with that thing there okay so we’re done with the measuring part right the dry stuff yes okay so you’re ready to go give me a second let me stir this up oh salt her flour already has salt worked into it and you’ve got to have salt for any kind of bread or it just tastes i don’t know what does it taste like when you don’t have any salt in it it’s just flat flat dead flat so i’m going to add about that’s about a teaspoon of salt you don’t have to use kosher salt but it’s pretty much the only kind i use now mamame has moved on pulling in front into the cutting end of the fat again renegade that she is no measuring just just diving right in there and i like to use a cup of buttermilk and since a pint is a pound the world around eight ounces fluid measure equals eight ounces of weight so i can just look in my scale and i’ve got eight ounces which is the same as a cup and i’m going to put in two ounces actually more like an ounce of butter and i’m just going to add it straight to this until i get one ounce which is there i’m going to hit the tear weight again she’s already smoking me slow down you make me look bad that how old’s that bowl that’s the only one i ever seen you make uh make biscuits in well it’s older than you are well a lot a lot of things are thank goodness that we’re still at that point i’m gonna add also two ounces of shortening let’s just break it up and work it in this is a lot more fun than her method all right she’s already going on the buttermilk how much do you think you use i never measure it i just put in there what i think it needs and stir it till it’s good to stir it still but she and i both like a very loose dough i’m going to add my buttermilk i lost my spoon mommy can i use yours can i use your sacred spoon you make fun of my spoon it’s a wonderful spoon waited perfectly for biscuit-making oh she’s ahead of me already this is looking pretty bad for me you see how gently she’s working it this these are the hands of a master right here you don’t see this kind of biscuit making much in america anymore barely patting it out no rolling necessary can i put your spoon in the sink yes okay before you wash your rolling pin you can roll it out rolling pins just start my cup of tea i’m gonna roll out enough flour to keep it from sticking on the board and then just turn out the whole thing oh she’s gone for her pan her special biscuit pan circa 1853 ulysses s grant i don’t even know where i play i will i’ve got to run for a biscuit pant biscuit cutter straight down twist pop out down twist the twist is okay but only if you’ve gone all the way through now you notice that both she and i like to put our biscuits shoulder to shoulder and that’s because you’ll get a better rise out of them if they’re just touching pushing down in the middle is going to help the biscuit to rise evenly since the heat hits the outside of the biscuit and works in if you didn’t punch it in you might end up with a domed biscuit right right okay you’re uh 400. you won’t buy biscuits in the oven yet yes well they’re done aren’t they isn’t it why do you not want to sit around and like stare at them you don’t want it to rise till they get in the oven that’s what i’m talking about perfect golden biscuits you
27 Comments
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Granny can't make biscuits if she has to think about it.Artistic talent just happens and can't be explained.My 80 yo cousin is a master biscuit maker but works so smoothly she can't relate to anything except ..Why'd I do what? It's how it's done that's all I know
Love this video! So full of love ❤️
If you had her make five separate batches, but secretly measured the actual ingredients, i bet her measurements would match.
OMGosh… I cook just like her… Love her so much.
The brief view of those biscuits looked divine! Thank you for displaying two methods of making southern style biscuits.
To cute love the team work and Biscuits look Delicious
I've tried my whole life to make biscuits. Been disappointed every time. This is the closest I've come. "loose dough" really moved me to the next level. thanks team.
How old is Alton there? My guess would be around 40, if so it's awesome his grandma was not only still alive but doing so well.
Tuesday, December 04, 2001
Last week "the big one" finally caught up with my grandmother. Good Eats fans may remember Ma Mae from a show called "And the Dough Also Rises" wherein she and I staged a biscuit bakeoff which she won.
Ma Mae wasn't a great cook. Her batterie de cuisine was humble. The highlight of her culinary library was a paperback published by the electric company in 1947. Her oven cooked a hundred degrees hot. She didn't even own a decent knife. And yet, her food was the epitome of good eats. Her chicken and dumplings, greens and cornbread were without equals. Her cobblers were definitive. Her biscuits … the stuff of legend. She learned to make these from her mother and grandmother. She didn't tinker with the dishes nor did she dissect them or ponder their inner workings. She just cooked. She thought my own Frankensteinian desire to understand food was a little on the silly side.
The first thing I did when I got to her house was greedily seize the small wooden recipe box that had sat on the counter my entire life. Upon inspection, this ancient codex proved disappointing. There were gobs of recipes written in her smooth hand, but they were all the stuff of gossip … Mary Sues Marshmallow Salad … Gertrude's Oatmeal divinity, etc. The real treasures were nowhere to be found and that made sense. She knew those recipes and had no reason to write them down. It had been my duty to learn them from her and I hadn't taken the time. In her last years I'd been too busy to visit much, too preoccupied with peeling away the mysteries of egg proteins and figuring out why toast burns. In short, I'd missed the whole stinkin' point. When I left her house after the funeral I took Ma Mae's favorite cooking tool, her grandmother's cast iron skillet. I understand this vessel, the particulars of its metallurgy, how heat moves through its crystalline matrix. But I'll never be able to coax the old magic from it and for that I am very sorry.
This is a cautionary tale kids, and I hope you'll take heed. In the end, cooking isn't about understanding it's about connecting. Food is the best way to keep those we must lose. So put down that glossy cookbook, put down that fancy gadget and get thee to grandmother's house. Or go cook with your dad, your aunt, your sister, your mom. Cook and learn and share while you can.
End of lecture.
posted by Alton Brown,1:53 PM

I'm trying to learn to make biscuits the Mame way – no measuring, just trusting the feel – and keep thinking "Alton, get out of the way, let me see what she's doing!" Wishing my Memaw was around to guide me, but we'll get there eventually <3
Such a beautiful lady making biscuits!! I’m learning from scratch, no pun intended!! I’m using white Lilly! One is with the red label, and one is the green label. I’ve been experimenting with butter, Crisco shortening, lard, and even a spoon full of refrigerated bacon grease trying to create my perfect biscuit. These are my latest attempts using self rising.
When messing with all purpose for some reason my biscuits often were gummy feeling.
Your tips were great.
I just made these and I’m never going back to biscuits from a can.
“The renegade that she is “ 😂😂
What a beautiful
Outfit your Mom is wearing. So very pretty.
I hope Alton has the bowl, spoon, and pan in a place of high honor. Rest in peace, Ma Mae!
Love how your mom uses self-rising flour and doesn't measure. That's the way I was taught, too. 😊
4:28 Flip them over, so the crimped edge from the twist in on the top. The top will look cleaner when baked, and it also helps them rise straighter, alongside having them touching as he suggests.
I made these 12/15/23. I have made numerous recipes with so so results. This one was easy enough and didn't require a 5cup flour commitment like the other recipes. I substituted the shortening for margarine, the biscuits were buttery and delicious. It made a thicker biscuit no super light and airy. And all of the buttermilk wasn't necessary, I added it little by little like grandma did and still ended up adding a little to much
Again, Alton works way too hard for the same result…
How long do you bake the biscuits or do you just watch them til GBD?
The soft winter wheat flour is KING ARTHUR FLOUR and it is 10,000 times better than any other flour! Trust me on this one. Buy a bag (yes it costs more but it is well worth it) to use for baking and you will never go back.
wish I knew what 10oz of flour to grams. many different measurements on the internet. One website says 10oz is 150 grams and I know that is wrong. Another website says it's 283.50. I believe if a person is going to measure then it's best to do it in grams.
I think that's the closest I've ever seen to how my grandmother in Waycross made the most heavenly biscuits ever tasted by nan. The biggest difference is that she didn't use buttermilk, often powdered milk or whole milk (it never really mattered they always tasted exactly the same) and she never cut them, they were always hand formed and gently pushed down with her knuckles. She too had her pan that is historic. Not one person in my family has ever been able to recreate that magic. And if you ever were graced enough to have one absolutely melt in your mouth it was more magical than disney ever dreamed of!
pint a pound the world round… for cream?? Not a good reference for fatty stuff, since it floats its density is lower than water… But ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I admire her method though. She knows how to do it.
100% 10 oz ap flour
~0.44% 1 tsp baking soda
~1.7% 1 tsp salt
5% 4 tsp baking powder
80% 8 oz buttermilk
10% 1 oz butter
20% 2 oz lard
Hello greetings from Mexico. Im wondering if you use anything to help the bicuits rise. Like baking powder or buttermilk?