A while back I showed you how I make biscuits-today I’m going to show you how Granny makes hers.
First Granny sifts about 2 cups of self rising white lily flour into her bowl.
Then she grabs a hunk of lard with her fingers and adds it to the flour. She uses the homemade lard her and Pap make till it runs out-then till their next rendering, she has to use store bought lard.
Granny works the lard through the flour with her fingers-there is a real art to this step. I’ve tried and tried and I always end up with a sticky mess.
She adds enough milk to make a soft dough.
Granny pinches off pieces of the dough and pats out her biscuits by hand. She places them on a greased pan and bakes them at 450 degrees until they are light golden brown.
Granny’s biscuits are delicious when they are piping hot straight from the oven-but they’re also good later in the day when you find them in a bowl on either the kitchen table or the back of the stove. Come back in a few days and I’ll show you my favorite thing to eat on top of Granny’s biscuits.
Tipper
love this! missing my moma’s biscuits right now! she sure had a nack for making biscuits! can’t seem to make them like her! drop biscuits is i wind up making!
Sonjaohull-thank you for the great comments!!! Go here to see how to make lard:https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/rendering-lard/
So how do make homemade lard? I bought some from a butcher last summer, but it smelled like plain ol bacon greae. I didn’t use use. How do you make lard?
My Mother’s biscuits are still talked about in our family. I learned how she made them and I used to do a pretty good job of mixing the dough by hand and pinching them off. But that was years ago. Mother had a special pan that was never washed. After the pan was used, it was covered an put back in the cupboard until the next meal. Her special pan was used for over sixty years and my sister in law, who has a big family and cooked like my mother, got Mother’s pan. I wanted it, but knew I’d not use it like she would. Mother made biscuits three times a day seven days a week.
I’d give anything to have one of her biscuits today.
Gimme some hot biscuits and pass the butter and strawberry jam.
One of my favorite snacks!!!
Nothing can beat lard for biscuits and pie crust!
shore wood beat them store boght biskits
Melissa-she uses sweet milk : )
Bradley-Ive heard of HighlandFish-but never knew what it was-now Ido : )
Tipper: my dad’s sourdough biscuit’s were as good as ive ever eaten ,but my wife’s are a close second. i like them with any jam and butter,or just pop one in the old pie hole.the best part is my wife just made um for dinner,now the marionberry jam ,my mouth is watering so bad i cant write. regards k.o.h
Not meaning to brag, but I can make biscuits any way you like them. I first learned to make them Granny’s way though. I like my biscuits plain or a slice of tomato.
They look like they would be delicious! I wish I could make them like that!
They look delicious! I’ve always liked them with butter or jam or jelly in the middle.
If only I could taste one of these biscuits! You reminded me of my grandma’s greek biscuits called “biscota stefanakia”. She shaped them into tiny wreaths placing some homemade strawberry or orange jelly in the middle. She’d pick the oranges from the huge orange tree in her garden to make the jelly. She never used a recipe – she’d make them just by sight!
Tipper,
Been waiting for this post about biscuits. With everybody talking about strawberry preserves, bacon and eggs, country ham, butter and all types of jams, nobody (I don’t think) mentioned that famous country specialty “Highland fish”.
How I found out about it was one day when I was going through the kitchen at this institution a lady called my name when I went by and said, “Ever had any Highland fish? I said lord no! She said “We are gonna put some meat on those bones son.” Just sit right there and we’ll show you what Highland fish is.
I had no idea what it was but I knew most of those women there and I also knew what ever it was, it would be scrumptous!
What was it? They took streak-o-lean salt pork that they had soaked in buttermilk all night and then dipped it in flour and fried it real crisp. When it was done it was brown and looked like a piece of fish. Then they put it in a biscuit big as a hubcap off a ’59 Pontiac. Well maybe it wasn’t that big but, it was rather large. It was delicious. Those ladies were always getting me to try their country specialties and I became their greatest fan. That was the first time I came to know what Highland fish was. Maybe someone else has heard that term. IT IS GOOOOOD!
Thanks Tipper.
Bradley
I do love bisquits, especially hot buttered ones. Now I’m hungry.
Whitetail Woods™
My favorite thing to have with good biscuits would be sausage and gravy. I just take the biscuit, split it open and cover it with the sausage and gravy. I sometimes love to have scrambled eggs added to the above. Nothing in the world like hot biscuits and your granny’s look yummy. Wish I was there to have a couple with you.
Tipper,
I love homeade biscuits! The only
thing I have any success with is
the spoon dropping method and then
flaten a bit. Those your mamma is
fixen is just right, not too tall.
Sometimes I get Hardees’ sausage
biscuits and if they’re too thick
I open it and throw out about half
that white stuff away. But there’s
nothing like mama’s biscuits.
…Ken
drooling now, all i need is some good old cane syrup
Oh, Tipper!
My mouth’s a waterin’ now! You didn’t say if your Granny uses sweet or buttermilk. I’ve always used buttermilk, but some of my kin swear by sweet.
Oh, and I’ll have mine with Apple butter, please.
Blackberry jam or sourwood honey are preferred but stewed apples are mighty good on those biscuits.
My wife is from Louisiana and loves mayhaw jelly on hers.
for many years we couldn’t get White Lily flour in our area of Florida — so every trip to GA and/or the Carolinas meant bringing back at least 5 bags of White Lily flour for Mom (and the current copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution!). My grandmother used the same method for all baking as did the Deer Hunters grandmother.
Lemon curd or raspberry jam what else could a person want to put on a biscuit, unless of course it was sausage gravy, blackberry jam would be really good right now, or strawberry-rhubarb preserves or retoasted with lots of butter….
Please pass the Blackberry Jam….or maybe I will have the Wild Strawberry Preserves…or maybe 2 biscuits..one of each! Or that sourwood honey. And that butter Miz Inlow used to make pale yellow with the wheat sheaf design. And some of that cream for the coffee. All this ready with some bacon and eggs on the table when I drug my butt out of bed. I lived in the shadow of Chunky Gal mountain, maybe that’s why I have a weight problem. Couldn’t be the homemade biscuits!
She makes it look so simple….but it’s not! I’ve tried to mix the shortening with my hands and I just wind up with mess all over my hands.
The Deer Hunter’s granny made then with her hands even mixing the milk in with her hands. She kneaded then in the bowl with dry flour in the bottom then pinched them off and put them on the pan to bake. When she was finished she put dish towel over the bowl and put it back in the cabinet till she next made biscuits…..and her hands were relatively clean!!
I tried that once too. It was just terrible, I was sticky to my elbows, well almost to my elbows. I had to throw it away, just couldn’t make it work.
I’m kind of hungry now, think I’ll go make a pan of biscuits. The kind you stir with a spoon and roll out on the counter and cut with a glass. lol
I have revised my original biscuit recipe for health’s sake, and am able to make a very tasty biscuit. Hudson Cream self rising is a flour many use in this area. No lard anymore, but that does not stop a true biscuit lover. Then I mix in low fat buttermilk and stir with large fork to prevent overworking. Flour the board with Bisquick as seems to prevent biscuit getting hard, and flour and press out my dough. Biscuits are cut with a cutter as I seem to create tiny monster heads if I try to shape them myself. They are cut and laid out on pan sprayed with Pam, and then a light spray of Pam on top. Pop in very hot oven..must be hot 425. Blackberry jelly then creates a treat minus many calories. I got to go make some biscuits. Hmmm think I may need to leave off that blackberry jelly. WVa
Wish I had one to go with this cup of coffee. I learned to cook by Mama telling me look at “just this much”. She measured everything by sight and never a recipe.Hers never failed.Took me awhile to learn but it works.
Oh the joy of a good, homemade biscuit! Add some butter and homemade jam and it doesn’t get any better. Thanks for sharing!
Tipper, if you didn’t tell me that was Granny making those biscuits, then I would think that someone must have been taking pictures of my Mama making them.
My brother, Garland, described Mama’s technique on the Vintage Vera Facebook page in a topic called “Food Habits we had as kids” on the Discussion Tab. If you listen to all of the Food Network experts, she broke all of their rules. But there was never an unappreciated biscuit made, especially if she made milk gravy or opened a jar of pear preserves. Thanks so much for all the memories! And Debby, we had to learn how to make recipes “till it looked right” too!
I hated it back when I was trying to learn to make biscuits and wanted to know exact measurements and all I got was, * you add enough till it looks right.* haha!
Ohhh! want homemade granny’s biscuits!
(I wrote up the scene in VK III where VK has the gritted bread *smiling* I didn’t go into too much detail (mentioned “Pap” and “Brasstown”) since that would take readers out of the story and scene, but I’ll be putting the recipe and his name in the acknowledgments!
Oh my mouth is watering! Isn’t it funny how some have ‘the touch’ with buscuits and some don’t? I have tried hundreds of times and I can’t get it right either Tipper! If I do make biscuits, I have to stick to the drop kind, which are NOT the same thing at all! It is probably just as well, I would end up fat and sassy if I could have good homemade biscuits anytime I wanted!
Tipper,
Stop it, you’re starving me to death…I’m getting me a biscuit!
Love that Texas Ware bowl!…ha
That’s how my Dad learned to make biscuits..and how he got the job as a short order cook in college…He used lard on the farm and then later they started using shortening. It takes practice to get them light and fluffy without making them tough and heavy..never overknead he told me…he could never tell me the exact amount of lard either..’cause he just grabbed a (maybe walnut size) lump, worked it in quick with his hands to a crumble, then added milk..Ha About 1 out of 10 times I could mix them right and get them like his….Mom couldn’t do it either..but she had her niche for a good biscuit too..
Thanks Tipper