TracyFood

Recipe: Cheddar-Scallion Drop Biscuits 22 July 2008 8:11 am

Posted by Tracy in : America's Test Kitchen,baking,cheese,friends,recipes,vegetarian , trackback

Fun fact! Scallions are green onions; it’s just another one of those East Coast-West Coast dialect differences, or that’s what I learned from this nifty guide to the allium family on Culinate. Drop biscuits are a fun and easy variation on classic buttermilk biscuits, which I have only fairly recently learned to appreciate. This post is for Mom and Dad Boothe, who gave me the subscription to Cook’s Illustrated which brought me the recipe that produced the biscuits that were so delicious last Monday (as well as a different recipe, which convinced me that biscuits were worth eating at all). Here’s hoping good recipe-sharing karma spills over into our apartment-hunting these next few days! (This post was written early Tuesday morning and scheduled for automatic posting some time during our flights to NYC; I hope it worked.)

Cheddar-Scallion Drop Biscuits

…one of the variations on “The Best Drop Biscuits” by Sandra Wu, Cook’s Illustrated #89, November & December 2007.

Ingredients and Equipment

2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (3/4 teaspoon of the regular table kind)
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese, preferably something nice and sharp
1/4 cup scallions/green onions (seriously, see the link above; it’s encyclopedic.)
1 cup cold buttermilk
10 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/4 stick, 5 oz), melted and cooled slightly
baking sheets, parchment paper or baking spray, cutting board and knife for scallions, grater for cheese, large mixing bowl, measuring cups and spoons (especially a 1/4 cup measure for portioning batter), spatula for mixing, microwave-safe container for melting butter unless you’re doing it on the stove (in which case I’m sure you can do the math), and a brush for topping biscuits with butter

Directions

Set up an oven rack in the middle position and preheat the oven to 475 degrees . Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, scallions, and cheese in the large bowl. Combine buttermilk and 8 tablespoons (1 stick) melted and slightly cooled butter in a small bowl (yay Pyrex measuring cups!) and stir until it forms clumps — so much more fun and easy than cutting up flour and rolling and forming biscuits the usual time-consuming way.

Pour clumpy butter-buttermilk into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined (batter will pull away from the sides of the bowl). Scoop and drop batter onto baking sheets (parchment-lined is where it’s at!); a greased 1/4 cup measure works awesome for this. Space the biscuits about 1 1/2 inches apart (the recipe says to aim for 2 1/4 inch diameters and 1 1/4 inches high, but I’ve never done anything fancier than drop globs out of the measuring cup, and they’ve always turned out fine).

Bake the biscuits until their tops are golden brown and crisp, 12 to 14 minutes. Meanwhile, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter if you haven’t already. Use the brush to apply that last delicious fatty goodness to the tops of the finished biscuits when they’re fresh out of the oven, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool — if they last that long before getting eaten.’

YUM. The recipe says it makes 12 biscuits, but I somehow got 13 out of it last time (though if you make the biscuits much smaller, reduce the baking times or it could get sad).

Peter

I may try this — I have a cheesy biscuit recipe I heavily modified from a sweet muffin recipe out of a magazine. Yours has a lot less cheese in it, which would make them cheaper to make (and moderately better for the eater — my recipe is basically cheese and butter held together with a thin veneer of flour; tasty, yes, but also — um — a little *much*). I hadn’t thought of putting foliage in a biscuit, either, and it sounds so good I can’t imagine why I haven’t….
http://www.tracyfood.com Tracy

Hi Peter! I HIGHLY recommend these biscuits; they are fun and easy and delicious. As always, I vote for using less of a stronger cheese over more of a weaker one, which used to get me in trouble when I ran cheese department customer service (“Ew, don’t buy low-fat cheese. Buy something you can’t or don’t need to eat a lot of, you’ll get less fat and be happier.”) The other variation I’ve tried for this recipe is rosemary-Parmesan, and I think it uses even less cheese because a good Parmesan is assertive enough that you don’t need to use very much. I suspect putting butter on at the very end of the recipe is another good way to get maximum flavor out of slightly less fat. Mmmm, fat.
Peter

I usually use pretty strong (and good) cheese, since I live a few blocks from Farmstead, a really amazing cheese monger in Providence, RI. I like the “sock in the mouth with a biscuit full of cheddar” feeling, but your recipe might provide that with less cost and fat (although, yes, “Mmmm,fat.” indeed).

Haha, rosemary-Parmesan! Brilliant! Currently, I am doing sage (and usually basil) and cheddar as well as dill and Emmentaler. Now I will need to try this… Hmmm, a long weekend… biscuit makin’….

I tried ham and Gorgonzola once, but it worked out to be a little salty. Also, it wasn’t a big hit with the vegetarians I know, and I got a little tire of shouting “no! not *those* biscuits!” What herb would go well with Gorgonzola? Just the cheese would be a little flat, I think.
Peter

Just made ‘em. I liked the flavor, but the cheese was a little subdued — I may try them again and use 4 oz cheese and 6 oz butter (not counting the stuff brushed on at the end) — it ocurs to me that I usually eat biscuits as a snack or for breakfast. If I was serving these alongside another dish, the subtler taste miht be a lot better.

Thanks for the “hot butter into cold buttermilk” trick — very cool, and fun to watch! I have also been using a food processor tow mix the dry ingrediants and cut the butter and cheese down to crumb consistancy. This is easier and less to clean up, though.
Peter

Update — Parmesan/Rosemary is a very good idea indeed. Thanks again for this recipe! mmmmmm, biscuits!