Cheddar Cheese Scallion Biscuits
Years ago I was the head baker at a restaurant in Tallahassee. Brunch has always been a big deal to me. Most chefs see it as a way to move a lot of stuff that needs to go. Sorry to ruin you illusions. But, they like to have fun doing it. Being creative with so much culinary room to play as brunch is where some of my best inspirations came. Sometimes things are just sitting around waiting to be combined. The cheddar cheese scallion biscuit was just that thing.
To make this biscuit really sing, the scallions should be sliced almost GoodFellas thin. The thinner they are the more they sorta just melt into the biscuit and become all flavor.
The procedure is straight up biscuit. I use my fingers instead of pastry blades which seem always to break or dinner forks which are too hard to grip that long. Everyone’s Granny made biscuits long before science told us not to touch the butter for it will melt or something. Pffft. Use your hands.
This double and quadruples easily, but this size batch made 8 substantial biscuits. Yeah, they are yummy the next morning as sausage and egg sandwiches, so cook extra bacon and sausage. Make sausage gravy. Make breakfast for dinner. You get the idea.
Cheddar Cheese scallion Biscuits
These are a delicious and fluffy and make a great foil for shredded Bar-b-que pork or with eggs and bacon in the morning. The mix quickly which makes is a short time from start to finish. Measure all your ingredients the night before and you'll have biscuits in the oven in nearly no time.
Ingredients
Biscuits
- 8.5 oz All purpose flour
- 1.25 T Baking powder 15 g
- .25 t Baking Soda
- 1 t Cream of Tartar 3 g. Helpful, but not required.
- 1 t Salt
- 2 t Sugar
- 2 each Scallions (optional) Cut as thin into rounds as you can
- 1.5 oz Grated Cheddar cheese 42 g
- 6 oz Buttermilk
- 2 oz Cold lard Cut into 1/4" dice
- 2 oz Cold butter Cut into 1/4" dice
Instructions
Mix the biscuits
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Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Gather a wooden spoon, a rubber scraper, sheet pan, baking paper or a silicone mat, a small bowl of flour for the counter, and cutters or a knife.
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Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter and lard into a bowl large enough for your hands to work.
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Using your fingers and thumbs squeeze the chunks of butter and lard between your thumb and forefinger. You are pressing the ingredients into the fats and at the same time making the chunks flat like coins on the railroad. Keep pressing and squeezing until all the chunks are flattened and the flour mix has a yellow hue to it.
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Add the cheese and the scallions. Mix them together just to separate them and make a small well in the center of the mix. Add the buttermilk. This is a messy job as it makes giant clumps of biscuit dough on your hands. There is a work around. Carefully use a wooden spoon and mix in small strokes, taking care not to fling the dough out of the bowl and mix until the biscuit dough comes together.
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Flour a section of your counter and turn the dough out. Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the pile of biscuits. Lightly dust the top with flour, and push the dough to about 1".
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Square the edges of the biscuits, push to keep the dough in an approximate rectangle. Brush the top with milk then cut them into shapes.
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I prefer to avoid re-rolling the extra so I cut them into squares or rectangles. Place the biscuits on the prepared sheet pan, with the edges touching, and place in the hot oven. Turn the oven to 400 degrees F and bake for 20 minutes.
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Done is determined by the color on top and bottom but also, push down on the biscuit a wee bit. If the biscuit feels loosey-goosey inside, bake a few more minutes.
Recipe Notes
The optional part on the scallions really is for finicky kids, of which I know more that a little. I think these biscuits are far superior with the scallions.
