Mom's Buttermilk Biscuits

My mom was a great cook and we always had a home cooked meal and ate as a family. Looking back, I don't know how she did it. Work full time, raise 3 kids, AND put a home cooked meal on the table every night! She was Super Woman! With those meals we almost always had my her buttermilk biscuits. She made them from scratch and they were so fluffy and delicious. Unfortunately, I never learned how to make them before she passed away in 2000. She tried to teach us before she died, but I was like 13 so I didn't really get it then. So a couple of years ago I was going through some old stuff in my dad's house and found all of my mom's recipes! (We thought we had lost them in one of the moves.) So I took them without telling anyone, scanned every one of them, and had a cookbook made for my dad, brother, and sister for Christmas. Anyway, one of the recipes is for Mom's Famous Biscuits and I've been trying to perfect the technique since.

The odd thing about the recipe is there are no measurements. Which is weird because I remember her being so precise with her measurements when she was baking. But not with these. So here is my latest attempt at making Mom's Famous Biscuits.



Mom's recipe for buttermilk biscuits.



She, therefore I, always make biscuits in a cast iron skillet. Grease the bottom only with Crisco and set aside. She says to sift self-rising flour into a large bowl. She gives no measurement for the flour, so I started with 3 cups. Then you make a well in the center of your flour and put a "golf ball size ball" of Crisco in the well. I have a scoop I use to measure out cookies that's about that size so that's what I used.

Next, pour in enough buttermilk to come about half way up the Crisco ball.

Next is the tricky part. You squish the Crisco between your fingers to incorporate it into the buttermilk. As you do this you want to roll the mixture around to slowly incorporate in the flour. Keep squishing and rolling until a dough forms. It will be very sticky. Next you want to get as much dough off your hand as possible. Then, you want to run your hand under the dough, then flip it into the center of the dough ball to slowly add more flour. Keep doing this until the dough is no longer super sticky. You can add more buttermilk or more flour as needed. 

To clean off your hands, put a small amount of flour in them and rub them together over the sink. Then coat them in a little more flour to form the biscuits. To do this, just grab a small amount of dough and roll it between your hands to for a ball and place in the greased cast iron skillet. When all the biscuits are in the pan, press them down slightly to flatten them. You want them to be close together so that they stick together when they rise.

What my mom didn't do, but I did was brush the top of the biscuits with a little melted butter to help them brown nicely.

Bake them in a 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes, checking them often to make sure they don't burn. This batch made 8 large biscuits.



They didn't turn out quite the way that Mom made them, but still pretty good. They were a little tougher than I remember hers being. I will just have to keep trying until I get them right.