Grandma's Buttermilk Biscuits (with Lard)

Remembering the Good ol' days

I remember the days of going to my Grandma's house in Florida. They lived a modest lifestyle, but my grandmother always prepared an amazing meal! My favorite meal of my grandmother’s meals was fried chicken, butter beans, creamed corn, fried okra, and buttermilk bisquits with butter. We always looked forward to eating the most delicious biscuits. It was the kind of biscuits that you couldn't eat just one and sometimes my father would enjoy 3 of these scrumptious biscuits.

My previous attempts of biscuit making

With three young boys, I tried often to teach myself to make buttermilk biscuits. Since I failed to ever get the recipe from my grandmother before she passed away, I tried so many recipes and spent so much time rolling out biscuit dough and cutting out the dough. The biscuits were always hard and did not resemble the golden, fluffy biscuits I enjoyed with my family at my grandmother's home.

Pleas to get the biscuit recipe

My Mom never had the recipe for buttermilk biscuits either. However, I convinced her to tell me what she knew about Grandma's biscuit making. Mom told me the only thing she remembered was Grandma putting flour in a bowl, adding a handful of lard, and a cup of buttermilk before scooping up a handful of dough and patting it into a biscuit. Hmmm, lard is the one thing that I had not tried. I tried butter, margarine, shortening, but I had not tried lard. Also, I always rolled my biscuit dough out and cut it out with a cutter. The result: too much handling and warm dough which made some really tough biscuits.

The three secrets to good biscuits

1. Keep your ingredients very cold. (The lard should not melt into the flour before it goes into a hot oven. That is what produces the right texture to biscuits. ). Place ingredients in the freezer or refrigerator for a few minutes if ingredients start to get warm during preparation of the recipe and always use frozen lard.

2. Use lard rendered from the leaf fat of a hog fed natural food. Since toxins are stored in the fat of animals, you want to choose leaf fat that comes from a healthy animal free of chemicals, hormones, and processed feed.

3. Handle your dough as little as possible to mix ingredients together. After you add the buttermilk, mix very gently with a spatula. It's ok if the mixture is still slightly wet. You can add a little flour when you scoop each biscuit.

Grandma's Buttermilk Biscuits

2- 1/2 c. all purpose flour

2 Tablespoons baking powder

1 Teaspoon salt

1/2 c. frozen lard + 1 tablespoons for greasing pan

1 c. homemade buttermilk (1 cup milk + 1 tablespoon white vinegar)

2 Tablespoons honey

2 Tablespoons butter

Directions:

1. Add 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar to 1 c. whole milk and put in the refrigerator.

2. Mix dry ingredients.

3. Grate frozen lard into the dry ingredients. Cut into dry ingredients with a fork and knife to make certain the lard doesn't clump into a large clump, but stays in small pea-sized clumps.

4. Add 1 tablespoon of honey to buttermilk and pour into a well shaped into the dry ingredients. Gently mix ingredients with a spatula until barely mixed.

5. Grease a cast iron pan with lard.

6. Scoop dough into your hand, add a small amount of flour if needed for it to stick together to form a biscuit.

7. Place in pan with biscuits touching.

8. Bake at 425 degrees for 13-15 minutes. Remove from oven. Brush with 1 Tablespoon of honey and melted butter.

9. Place bake in the oven for another 3-5 minutes until the biscuits have a golden brown buttery crust.

10. Serve warm.

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