Crunchy lil’ buttermilk biscuits

I have seen the light, and it is fatty, soft and pearlescent.

It’s lard. And it’s freaking heavenly in biscuits.

Made a batch of biscuits this morning, for the first time in years. My friend Tricia is hosting a South Carolina shrimp n’ grits meal at her house later today, so I decided to whip up some biscuits to go on the side. I’m always looking for excuses to try out Southern dishes, being married to a Southern boy. And I hadn’t tried the biscuit recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking, my favorite Southern cookbook ever. It called for lard only. No butter.

Luckily, lard is everywhere in Mexico. After doing the stairstepper for an hour at the gym this morning (ironic, no?), I stopped by our local teeny mercado, and bought 10 pesos worth. In USD that’s less than $1, and it equaled about two cups. It looked like a French cheese. Isn’t it pretty?

When I got home, I mixed together my flour and baking powder, and then squished in the lard with my fingers. I rolled out the dough and proceeded to cut out the biscuits with a drinking glass. (Biscuit cutters don’t reside in my house.) Unfortunately, I ignored the “DO NOT TWIST YOUR BISCUIT CUTTER INTO THE DOUGH!” rule, because really, I’ve always twisted my cutter, in the umm… maybe three times that I’ve made biscuits. How the heck else do you make a clean cut?

I should have headed Mr. Peacock and Ms. Lewis’ advice, though, because when the biscuits came out of the oven, they were disappointingly flat. Crunchy and hot and yummy, but flat.

The next round, I did not twist. Too bad I only had three biscuits left to make. But they emerged light and fluffy.

Who knew twisting your biscuit cutter would make such a difference?

Recipe below, if you want to try it yourself. Just please, please don’t twist your biscuit cutter into your dough, or else this biscuit will swallow you with his gigantic biscuit mouth.

Crunchy Lil’ Buttermilk Biscuits
Adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking by Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis
Note: The biscuits were just a smidge too salty for me, so next time I’ll use less salt.

5 cups sifted flour (measured after sifting; a pain, I know, but it makes a difference)
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon baking powder (the authors encourage you to make your own)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 cup packed lard, chilled
1 1/4 cups buttermilk, or if you live in Mexico City and can’t find buttermilk anywhere, use sour milk (See note below on how to make your own sour milk)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 500F, or 300 celsius. (You want a hot, hot, hot oven.) Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl, and whisk to blend. Add the lard, and working quickly, coat in flour and rub between your fingertips until approximately half of the lard is finely blended and the other half remains in large pieces, about 1/2 inch in size. Pour in your buttermilk or sour milk, and stir quickly until the dough is blended.

Turn the dough immediately out onto a floured work surface, and with floured hands knead quickly until it becomes cohesive.

Gently flatten the dough with your hands into a disk of even thinness; then, using a floured rolling pin, roll it out into a uniform thickness of 1/2-inch. With a dinner fork dipped in flour, pierce the dough completely through a 1/2-inch intervals. Lightly flour a 2 1/2-inch or 3-inch biscuit cutter and stamp out rounds WITHOUT TWISTING the cutter into the dough. Cut the biscuits from the dough as close together as you can, for maximum yield.

Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet, placing them so that they just barely touch. You can reroll the scraps, or arrange them around the baking sheet edge as a cook’s treat.

Put the baking sheet immediately onto the center rack of a preheated oven. Bake 15 minutes in high altitude, or 10-ish if you’re not at 10,000 feet like me. When the biscuits are golden brown, remove from oven and brush tops with melted butter.

How to make sour milk: Mix 1 3/4 cups milk with 2 teaspoons lemon or lime juice, and 2 teaspoons cider vinegar. Let sit until curdled, around 10 to 15 minutes.