Buttery Flakey Biscuits

It's not a whole meal, but I could eat just biscuits and be very content. 🥰

It's taken me a lot of practice to come up with a recipe that I really like. Mana's biscuits are great, but these are really a step up. 

I just eyeballed this batch, and thankfully, they were perfectly moist, buttery, and flaky.

Here's the recipe to the best of my ability...lol😁 I'm an eyeballer. 

I didn't really measure well. 

Approximately 3 cups White Lily self-rising flour 

A stick and a half of frozen butter

I rarely keep buttermilk in the house, so I use half and half. I just added by eyeballing the dough.  Maybe 2 cups. You can get powdered dry buttermilk that keeps longer if you like buttermilk better 

I think that grating the butter frozen into the flour is what makes them flaky and moist. 

And I touch the dough as little as possible, so that my hands don't warm the butter. I use a pastry cutter to mix. And a fork. I only fold the dough maybe twice and pat it out as quickly as I can. Cut them out and get them in the pan. That frozen butter melts as they bake, and leaves nice tender, moist layers. 

I'm sorry I'm not accurate on measurements, but I think these are pretty close.

Slow Cooker Roast with Gravy

Ingredients:

2-3 pounds of your preferred roast (such as chuck or sirloin)
3/4 cup beef broth
1 tablespoon Kitchen Bouquet (browning and seasoning sauce for roast)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 can (10.5 ounces) cream of mushroom soup
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 package onion soup mix (1 ounce)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon each of dried thyme and garlic powder
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, combine beef broth, mushroom soup, onion soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar, garlic powder, thyme, and pepper. Set aside.

2. Coat the roast with Kitchen Bouquet. Brown it in a skillet.

3. Transfer roast into slow cooker.

4. In the same skillet, melt butter, add flour, and cook briefly.

5. Pour the prepared gravy mixture into the skillet, whisking to loosen browned bits. Cook until the gravy thickens.

6. Pour the thickened gravy over the roast.

7. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours until roast is tender

Mana's Pintos and Ham

Another Saturday tradition was mom's pinto beans and ham (served with homemade chowchow relish and a chunk slice of sweet onion), fried potatoes and onions, Mom's Cornbread, and sometimes fried yellow squash coated with cornmeal, salt and pepper. The best lunch ever and so cheap to make!

Do not use canned pintos or Mana will come back from the grave and take a wooden spoon to your butt! Start by sorting your dried pinto beans and remove and broken pieces or pebbles. I use a 16 oz package of beans. Place in a large bowl or pot, covering with water. Let soak overnight or at least 6 hours. I usually add baking soda to the water when I soak my beans it helps with gasiness that comes along with bean territory. In the morning drain the water. 

Add the beans to your crock pot. Cover with fresh water, add all your spices, sugar, oil, pepper and ham or ham hock. I used the large ham hock from the end of our Christmas ham it still had so much meat left on it I knew it would be perfect for this recipe. 

Place the lid on top and cook on high for about 6 - 8 hours. Try not to open the crock pot for the first 3 hours after 6 hours check if the beans are done. If not let them cook some more until tender.

Crock Pot Pinto Beans & Ham 

1 - 16 oz package dry pinto beans
2 - tablespoons baking soda
1 - tablespoon sugar
1 - tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 - tablespoon pepper
1 - small onion, cut into chunks
1 - ham hock, ham bone or 2 cups of cooked ham

Sort your beans and remove and broken pieces or pebbles. I use one 16 oz package of beans. Place in a large bowl or pot, covering with water. 

Add the baking soda to the water, and let the beans soak at least 6 hours or overnight. After 6 hours or overnight drain the water from the beans. 
Add the beans to a 6 quart crock pot and cover with fresh water. You want the beans to be covered by at least one inch.  
 
Add the pinto bean seasoning, sugar, vegetable oil, pepper and onion. Taste the beans after several hours of cooking and add more seasonings if you think it needs it. I used a total of one tablespoons pepper. 
 

Add one of the following for additional seasoning, one ham hock, ham bone, or slice of country ham cut into pieces. 

Place lid on crock pot and cook on high for about 6-8 hours. make sure the beans stay covered with water, so check occasionally.  If you need more water, then add it. The beans should have a soup consistency. 

In 6 hours, test beans and if they are cooked. Remove ham bone and pull of the meat or remove meat from ham hock and serve. Don't forget the wedge of cornbread. 

Grab the Beano!

Mana's Buttermilk Pancakes

A Saturday morning tradition. As she was blessed with grandchildren, they would demand her pancakes or waffles when visiting. And why not; they were delicious. Bisquick mix....yuck!

Stir well 1 t. Baking soda into 2 cup buttermilk. Add two beaten large eggs.

In large bowl, stir together well...
2 level cups flour
2 teaspoons Baking powder
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
(or 2 c. Self rising flour if you have it and leave off salt and baking powder)

Dump dry mix into buttermilk mixture. Add 2 T. Oil (or 2 T. Melted real butter).

Wisk just to mix well but don't over beat it or pancakes will be tough instead of tender. It will be a little lumpy. No problemo! For waffles the batter should be a little thicker, so not quite as much buttermilk. (Freeze extra waffles, after they are cooled off, in freezer bag and reheat in toaster oven).

I use a flat iron skillet and grease lightly with Pam or you can use a coconut oil. The pan should be hot but not smoking (med-hi). Pour 4" pancakes and watch it start to sizzle in the edges and little craters appear in top. That's when you flip. Brown other side. Add butter and you favorite syrup and/or fruit topping and dig in.

Optional Additions:
Gently fold into batter 1 c. Blueberries.
Or- sliced bananas and walnuts
Or- chocolate chips
Or- whatever!

These are also yummy cooked in a little hot bacon grease, but then again, what isn't better cooked that way!

Mana's Flakey Buttermilk Biscuits (adapted by Cheryl)

A real proper Southern biscuit has a slightly crisp shell and the insides are as soft as an old pillow. That's just common knowledge down home and if you've ever eaten a true Southern biscuit, you'll know the difference. Warm biscuits slathered with butter and your favorite jam or honey are always a hit. I grew up also eating them with molasses or dark Karo syrup. Or maybe split and covered with hot sausage gravy. You can also add 2 cups of shredded cheddar and 2 t. garlic powder for great cheesy biscuits. They are good the morning splitting them, spread on butter, and toast in a toaster oven.

There are some "tricks" I'll share to getting the perfect biscuit. They might sound trivial but trust me they make all the difference in the world. I'll just put those first so you are thinking about it when you start preparation. If you make them a lot, and I'm betting once your family gets a taste they'll be asking for them regularly, this will become second nature and you won't have to read them every time. I could make biscuits in my sleep I've done it so much. So first a little biscuit education!

* One of the unshakeable tenets of Southern cooking is that Southern-style baking requires soft winter wheat flour - the kind with less protein. If you can get your hands on it, use White Lily Flour which has the least protein and less gluten. It makes biscuits and lighter and fluffier. Trouble is, the demarcation line going west for availability of this largely Southern brand, is somewhere around Oklahoma. You won't find it in California, but thankfully you can now buy it online from Smuckers since they bought out White Lily (http://bit.ly/2EyHv2K). What price perfection?! 
Another acceptable flour is King Arthur (use the self-rising kind), but be warned, you just will not get the same perfect result. Here's a comparison of the same recipe and same technique but with two different flours. You can plainly see White Lily is the ruling queen for biscuits, cobbler, scones, cookies, or shortcake. The White Lily biscuits rose a full 1/2" higher than did the King Arthur, the shell crisped better, and most importantly, the innards were as soft as your grannies yellow cake. The King Arthur biscuit was also slightly tough. 

You might be thinking around this point, flour is flour so who cares! You can still make your biscuits with any all-purpose flour, but I'm telling you right now they won't rise properly. They can turn out crumbly, or worse still - tough. Sometimes they will be gluten-y, and none of they were ever ever be soft enough inside to past muster on a Southern table.  Okay, enough about that!


* Make sure you use real salted butter and that it is SUPER cold (I usually take mine out of the freezer and cut it with a sharp knife into small cubes.)


* Don't use a dull edged drinking glass to cut your dough. You need a sharp biscuit cutter. The technique matters. Do NOT twist it at the end because it seals the edges of the dough and keeps the biscuits from rising. Dip the cutter in flour when needed to keep it from sticking to the dough. Bet you didn't know that!


*When you put the biscuits on a cookie sheet, or in an iron skillet, they MUST be slightly touching and not spaced wide apart. If you cook them in a cast iron skillet, you want just a tad of grease on the bottom - not a lot, a faint sheen. If I cook bacon or sausage in the pan I'll pour off the grease then lightly wipe the pan with a paper towel leaving a smidgen in the bottom. Also your pan and your grease should be cool.

Preheat oven to 425° F. 

Buttermilk Biscuits Ingredients

2 cups White Lilly Flour (or King Arthur self-rising in which case all you add is extra baking powder and the baking soda)
1Tb. baking powder (yes - tablespoon!)
1 tsp salt
1 stick butter (salted or unsalted) (VERY cold): a good method is to cut up a cold stick into little cubes and then put it in the freezer for about 5 minutes.
Whisk together the buttermilk and honey:  
3/4 - 1 cup-ish VERY COLD buttermilk (use enough until the dough is just barely wet enough)
2 T. Honey (this can be omitted if you don't have it)
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. (If you are using self-rising flour, add 3 t. baking powder and 1/2 t. baking soda and use a whisk to mix the dry ingredients well before adding the butter.)

Take the butter cubes from freezer and and cut them in with a hand pastry cutter (or pulse a few times in a food processor). You want the butter pieces no bigger than peas – the mixture should resemble coarse meal. Work fast because you don't want the cold butter to warm. Here's why: Part of what makes biscuits rise and be so tall and fluffy is the cold butter hitting the heat of the oven and creating steam. The steam pushes the biscuits up, up, up! If you want, you can stick the bowl of flour and butter into the frig to chill for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together the buttermilk and honey in a measuring cup. Add to the bowl with the butter/flour mixture and stir gently just until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently about 3-4 times to bring it together (easy does it). You'll sprinkle on small amounts of flour as you go to reduce stickiness and wetness, and also sprinkled on your rolling surface. The dough may still be a little crumbly, that’s fine. Roll or pat the dough into a 9×5-inch rectangle about 1/2-inch thick. Fold the dough into thirds like a business letter (using the long sides of the rectangle). Once again, roll the dough into a 9×5-inch rectangle about 1/2-inch thick, and again fold it into thirds like a letter. Roll the dough out to 3/4" thickness (the shape doesn’t really matter). Using a sharp biscuit cutter, cut biscuits from the dough (IMPORTANT! Don’t twist the cutter, use a straight up and straight down motion) and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Gather the scraps and cut more biscuits once or twice to get as many as possible.) The last thing before putting these in the oven is to make a fist and you one knuckles to push down on each biscuit making an indention. Why you might well ask!  Because, believe it or not - they will rise better!

Bake in preheated oven for 11-14 minutes, or until the biscuits have risen and are golden brown on top. Optionally brush the tops with a mixture of melted butter and honey and serve warm.