Sunday Biscuits

Keep the butter cold at all costs!!

It’s good you didn’t wake up hungry, because you’ll need to take a little time this morning, but I promise it’ll be worth it.

Sunset in Biloxi, Polaroid 600 and Polaroid film, circa 2008

Make sure you have these things.

2 cups flour (spoon your flour into the measuring cup and shear off
with a knife)
1 tablespoon baking powder (immediately throw out whatever is in your
pantry and buy some new, it’s like a dollar, and it does expire)
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick salted butter
3/4 cup whole milk (I am not a buttermilk devotee, but if you have it, go wild)

1.  The night before you’re going to make your biscuits throw the stick of butter in the freezer.  You’ve got 2 fats in this thing that makes the biscuits flaky, tender, and crispy —the butter and the milk. The colder the butter is when it hits the oven, the better, so starting at frozen really works, plus it makes incorporating the butter into the dough easier.

2.  Turn your oven on 450, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (just buy some if you don't have it, it’s so useful and helps in clean up, I swear).

3. Don’t forget the music. Ideally this is Sunday morning, so I would put on Southern Nights by Allen Toussaint. It’s about 35 minutes long so it’s the perfect soundtrack. If you don’t have it handy, I would think about spinning a battered Stax compilation you inherited from your parents or a cool aunt.

4.  Pour the milk into a measuring cup, and stick it back in the fridge to keep it chilly.

5.  Dump your flour, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Give it a quick stir.

Brooklyn apartment, Polaroid 600 with Impossible film, ca. winter 2014

6. You know how people like to rip on those recipes with long stories at the beginning, all just give me the recipe, and mad someone wrote about their life and what the food means to them? Those stories are useful to me, beyond that listening to someone else’s stories is a deluxe way to live. I mean the recipe might be highly ranked in a search engine, but if you read through the preface you’ll see if they really care about the food or your experience. Sometimes you read one of them, and they’re like in this really petty fight with their partner, like mad because they really didn’t want that dog, and the recipe is somehow centered on that dispute, and you really should just get out of there. Whatever the recipe is about it’s going to taste bad.

5.  Moving quickly, grate the butter into the bowl of flour mix.  Yes, grate it—using using a box grater or handheld. It works amazingly well with the frozen butter (vouched to me originally by Ashleigh Coleman, and I always trust Ashleigh). It also gives you the perfect size butter pieces for flaky biscuits. Just make sure you move fast, because every second counts in keeping the butter cold.  The last chunk that you can’t quite grate, just chop into quarters and toss in.

Hinds County, Polaroid 600 with this one batch of Impossible film that made these almost neon colors, 2016

6.  Using a wooden spoon, give a good healthy swirl to the flour-butter mix so it’s combined.  Then, make a well in the middle of the mix.

7.  Pour the very cold milk into the well.  Using a wooden spoon, gradually combine the flour mix with the milk.  It’s going to be VERY shaggy, but that’s okay.  If it’s not combining, throw another tablespoon or so of milk onto the dusty bits to get them to stick to the main mass. It’ll be fine.

8.  Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  This is the fun part! Remember to be gentle with your dough; don’t beat it up. Instead, gently but firmly pat and pull the dough with your flour-dusted hands into an inch-ish thick rectangle. Then fold it back, and pat and pull back into a rectangle.  Do this three or four times until it seems like one continuous mass.

9.  If you want cat’s heads, just take a sharp knife and cut into 6 squares and toss in the oven.  If you want pretty round friends, use a cutter or a glass.  I get about 6 from the first pass, then resmush the dough, and end up with a total of 10 to 12 biscuits.

Zebulon, Georgia, Polaroid SX-70, 2018. This reminds me of the tracks in the flour.

10.  I bake these, turning once, for about 12 minutes.  Just watch them; you want them to start turning golden.

11. Southern Nights eneded, and you need something to listen to while you clean up and wait on the biscuits. Have you ever heard the version of “Time Is on My Side” by Irma Thomas? It’s just glorious; a tousled hair, bent-but-not-brokenhearted whopper of a song. Writing “song” might not represent it properly. If “Time Is on My Side” by Irma Thomas were jewelry, it would be a crown.

12. So I normally cook 5 biscuits and freeze the rest. Of the 5, one is for testing. The test is with honey; they really don’t need any butter; they’re plenty buttery and salty. The test is just me going “oh my God” while eating a biscuit with honey. It’s about as primal an experience as you can have with food. The other two biscuits then deliver eggs or fake sausage with pepperjack or maybe some cheddar that’s about to go bad, but you can nick the green off the edges and be just fine. I love a biscuit sandwich for breakfast.

What strikes me is that they’re crispy. It’s the golden, salt-sharp crisp I like so much. They’re somehow both light and substantial.

13. If you eat those 3 biscuits, and you actually kind of cleaned the kitchen up while they were baking, plus there’s some for later, and some in the freezer for the rest of the week (just throw them in a 450 oven for as long as it takes, like 20 minutes)—yes. Yes, you should drink coffee and lay on the couch and watch the SEC Final from last night, since you went to bed early because Bama didn’t play. You’re done and it was already a grand day and it’s only 9 a.m. You are an unqualified success. This is what Sunday Biscuits can do for you. Listen to “Time Is on My Side” again and be happy with your life.

AS ALWAYS I am gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.