Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (2024)

Why It Works

  • Quickly mixing the dough with a fork reduces gluten formation, resulting in a tender, soft drop biscuit.
  • Preparing the butter first and reserving it in the refrigerator keeps it cold to avoid unwanted melting.

Traditional drop biscuits require just five ingredients, but with their buttery, salty flavor, and cloud-like bite, the final result tastes anything but ordinary. While they're simple, there are still nearly endless variations from one coveted family recipe to the next, each with intense loyalties and deep-seated tastes and opinions attached. With my hat off to your time-honored recipes and trustworthy techniques, I'm here today to present my own drop biscuit thoughts and a recipe.

Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (1)

Fannie Farmer, of the famed Boston Cooking School, called drop biscuits "emergency biscuits," which is incredibly appropriate considering that all you need to make them is about 25 minutes and a minimally stocked pantry. In fact, because of their speedy nature, they are a valued go-to item even for professional bakers and chefs.

Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (2)

Two Ways to Mix Drop Biscuits

To make them, I start by cutting the butter into lima bean–sized pieces and reserving it in the refrigerator to keep it nice and cold. After mixing my dry ingredients together (flour, salt, and baking powder), I add the butter and work it quickly with my hands, rubbing the butter into the flour just enough. Over-mix, and the result is tough; under-mix, and the result is dry, not tender.

This step can also be done in afood processor, requiring just a few short pulses. Much as when making a scone (which is essentially a biscuit with more sugar and an egg), you want to keep pieces of solid, visible butter in there to give you a tender, rather than dry or chewy, final drop biscuit.

The food processor is a great option when you're working with really large batches of dough, or if you're working in a particularly warm environment. Otherwise, rubbing in the butter by hand gives you more control over the mixing. It also means fewer dishes, which is always a big plus in my world.

After that, I carefully mix in the liquid with a fork to create a dough that's shaggy and moist. The beauty of the drop biscuit is that it requires much less handling than itssuper-flaky cousin, so there's much less risk of overworking the dough and developing too much gluten.

A Simple Ingredients List is Best

Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (3)

Some recipes call for buttermilk, others for milk; since I tend to have whole milk on hand more often, I stay in line with Fannie's "emergency biscuit" philosophy and use a milk-based approach. After all, part of the advantage of these biscuits is how easy they are to throw together with ingredients that most of us have available all the time.

Unlike some recipes,my drop biscuits donotinclude an egg. Although I played around with several variations using egg, it always seemed to make a drop biscuit that was overly spongy and cake-like, rather than soft and tender.

I also experimented with different ratios of heavy cream to milk, but the higher fat content from the cream, although delicious, created a denser final product. In the end, the simple, five-ingredients formula—butter, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk—yielded the best results.

June 2014

Recipe Details

Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe

Prep5 mins

Cook20 mins

Active15 mins

Total25 mins

Serves8to 20 biscuits

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (6.6 ounces; 190g)

  • 2 teaspoons baking powder

  • 1 teaspoon (4g) Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt use half as much by volume or the same weight

  • 4 ounces cold unsalted butter (1 stick; 115g), cut into 1/4-inch cubes and refrigerated

  • 3/4 cup (180ml) whole milk

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper; alternatively, grease the baking sheet with butter.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (4)

  2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (5)

  3. Toss butter into dry ingredients until coated with flour. Working quickly, using your fingers or a pastry blender, rub or cut butter into flour until it resembles coarse meal. Alternatively, add flour mixture and butter to the bowl of a food processor and pulse 2 to 3 times to form pea-sized pieces; transfer to a large bowl.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (6)

  4. Add milk and stir with a fork until the mixture just comes together into a slightly sticky, shaggy dough.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (7)

  5. For small biscuits, use a teaspoon or a small cookie scoop to mound walnut-sized balls of dough onto prepared baking sheet. For large biscuits, use a 1/4-cup measuring cup to mound balls of dough onto prepared baking sheet.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (8)

  6. Bake biscuits until golden brown, about 15 minutes for small biscuits and 20 minutes for large ones. Let cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

    Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (9)

Special Equipment

Food processor (optional), rimmed baking sheet and wire cooling rack

Read More

  • The Serious Eats Guide to Biscuits
  • Pastries
  • Sides
Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a biscuit and a drop biscuit? ›

Drop biscuits have more milk or other liquid added to the dough than rolled biscuits. The dough is moister and cannot be kneaded or rolled; simply drop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheet. Drop biscuits don't rise as much as other biscuits and they are always coarser in appearance and texture.

How do you keep drop biscuits from falling apart? ›

Fat aside, a common solution to crumbly biscuits is to cut back on the measured amount of dry ingredients. According to Quaker, you should be scooping flour gently with a spoon instead of sticking your measuring cup directly into the bag, which can lead to compacted mis-measurements.

Are biscuits better made with butter or Crisco? ›

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

Do drop biscuits have more liquid than rolled biscuits? ›

A little bit more rustic than their rolled cousins, drop biscuits are made by 'dropping' a spoonful of moist dough onto a baking sheet, rather than rolling them out and shaping them carefully with a cutter. Drop biscuits contain more liquid than rolled ones and don't tend to rise as high as other biscuits.

What is the least popular biscuit? ›

Digestives, malted milks and Maryland cookies are among the least favoured biscuits. There's a resounding theme emerging here, and it's that these biscuits are plain AF, which is probably why they didn't hit it off with our impassioned biscuit munchers – all gaining just one vote each.

What not to do when making biscuits? ›

5 Mistakes You're Making With Your Biscuits
  1. Mistake #1: Your butter is too warm.
  2. Mistake #2: You're using an inferior flour.
  3. Mistake #3: You use an appliance to mix your batter.
  4. Mistake #4: You don't fold the dough enough.
  5. Mistake #5: You twist your biscuit cutter.
Feb 1, 2019

Why are my drop biscuits crumbly? ›

When the fat is cut too small, after baking there will be more, smaller air pockets left by the melting fat. The result is a baked product that crumbles. When cutting in shortening and other solid fats, cut only until the pieces of shortening are 1/8- to 1/4-inch in size.

Is buttermilk or heavy cream better for biscuits? ›

Heavy Cream.

The heavy cream adds flavor to the biscuit by adding a little more fat and helps hydrate the dough. The extra fat in the heavy cream is helpful because buttermilk in stores is often “low-fat” buttermilk.

Is buttermilk or milk better for biscuits? ›

Buttermilk can produce better results when baking biscuits than using regular milk or cream. Buttermilk is acidic and when it is combined with baking soda, it creates a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the dough to rise and gives the biscuits a light and flaky texture.

Which liquid makes the best biscuits? ›

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

What are mourning biscuits? ›

Dr Gadoud said: “Funeral biscuits were biscuits served at or associated with funerals. They were generally two biscuits wrapped up and presented to each person attending the funeral or sent out with the invite to the funeral or afterwards.

Why are they called drop biscuits? ›

Drop biscuits get their name from how they are formed: By spooning the dough and "dropping" it onto the cooking surface, whether it be a baking sheet or straight onto a chicken pot pie. When baked on their own, they take less than 20 minutes in the oven.

Do they add egg in biscuits? ›

Eggs act as a binder for biscuits, without them the mixture will be far too crumbly. They also add flavour and texture, as well as extending shelf life. Whole eggs are used to glaze baked goods including biscuits and pastries as they contribute colour and shine during baking.

What does dropping biscuits mean? ›

the quality or state of having or showing a lack of experience or judgment.

Is a drop away more accurate than a whisker biscuit? ›

While many bowhunters who only use drop-away rests tout their products' superior speed and accuracy, field tests have indicated the difference between Whisker Biscuits and drop-aways is minimal to negligible for most hunting scenarios, losing just a few feet per second and about an inch of drop at longer distances.

What are the 2 types of biscuit dough? ›

Soft dough biscuits as the name suggests are softer and fluffier than their hard dough counterparts. They have higher levels of fat & sweetness and are generally manufactured with the help of a rotary moulding machine.

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