ARE TWO INGREDIENT BISCUITS A THING?
Hi W4D Friends! If you’ve ever wanted to make a recipe, but didn’t have all the ingredients, then you’ll be really interested in Elizabeth’s recipe this week—it only requires two ingredients! Anthony celebrated a birthday over the weekend at one of LA’s most exciting new restaurants… will it get two thumbs up??
MASTER HOMEMADE BISCUITS WITH TWO INGREDIENTS
EK: I love to make biscuits and I love to eat biscuits. Who doesn’t?
AU: I do, too. I love biscuits in every form: sweet, savory, from the land of Cheddar Bay… even canned ones! “Biscuit” is also a nickname that I was given at a Beyonce concert. A group of spirited ladies yelled “Go Biscuit! Go Biscuit!” as I performed every dance listed in the lyrics to her song Get Me Bodied.
EK: GO Biscuit! Ok, now that I know that, I will forever think of you affectionately as Biscuit!
And speaking of Southern biscuits…wait, you are one of those as well!
OK, back to baking biscuits! I’ve made biscuits every way that you can imagine: I’ve used lard, butter, Crisco, milk, buttermilk and heavy cream to bind them and make them flaky.
I learned to bake biscuits by measuring the flour, salt and leavening separately, and I’ve used self-rising flour. I watched the seasoned biscuit makers at Biscuitville make biscuits by touch and feel with lard, buttermilk and self-rising flour.
AU: You basically have a Bachelor’s of Biscuits!
EK: Maybe even a Masters!
Since Biscuitville biscuits are some of the best I’ve ever eaten, I made them their way too. And, the verdict is that I like all the methods for different reasons and different purposes.
Which brings me to the Two Ingredient Biscuits… I used to think that a cream biscuit (made with heavy cream and a touch of sugar) should be reserved for strawberry shortcake or the top of a sweet fruit cobbler. But then I made Nathalie Dupree’s Two Ingredient Biscuits. With a name like that, it’s both an invitation and a challenge for any self-respecting scratch biscuit maker to try them.
EK: Nathalie’s biscuits are made with self-rising flour and heavy cream. If you’ve never used self-rising flour, it is flour with baking powder and salt. It is a great baking shortcut. You can buy it or make your own self-rising flour:
To make self-rising flour: whisk in 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt for every cup of flour.
The first time I baked up a batch, I had to eat my words, and it was a delicious penance. The texture of the Two Ingredient Biscuits is soft and fluffy; tender and more refined than it has a right to be. The crumb is moist but not greasy at all.
I used self-rising White Lily flour which is made from soft winter wheat and it is low in protein and gluten which means that even if you over-work your biscuit dough, it is almost impossible for the biscuits to turn out tough and hard (which can happen when you use standard all-purpose flour).
If you don’t have White Lily flour in your local grocery store, you can buy it online. As a substitute you can use cake flour and add an additional 2 tablespoons for every cup of all-purpose flour in the recipe, and you can also buy self-rising cake flour.
And, full disclosure, I actually used three ingredients to make Nathalie’s biscuits as I added 2 ounces or 1/2 stick of butter.
No matter how I make biscuits, I always layer them with butter. the French call this laminating the dough. It is technically many thin layers of dough separated by butter. It is achieved by repeated buttering, folding and rolling. Some laminated doughs have up to 80 layers, so biscuits borrow the technique from laminated dough like croissants, but aren’t truly laminated.
EK: Once I made the biscuit dough, I patted it out, brushed it with melted butter, folded it over, and repeated the butter and the folds until I got 4-5 layers. You can see the progression in the photos above.
EK: Once I had all the layers, I patted it into a round ball and gently rolled it out with a rolling pin. Next, I cut the biscuits. I used my favorite wooden biscuit cutter that is handmade in Tennessee and sold by Joseph Riley Land. You want to flour the edge of the cutter by sticking it in flour, and position it as close to the rim as you dare. Cut the biscuits close together and cut them straight. You never want to twist the cutter, but instead “punch” it straight down. If you twist the biscuit cutter, you will seal the edges and the biscuits won’t rise as well.
This recipe yields 12-14 biscuits. I got 12 biscuits out of the disc of dough that you see in the photo above, and made 2 more from the scraps of the dough that was leftover from the cutting. For reference: I roll the dough into a ½-inch-thick round for normal biscuits, but if you want bigger biscuits, roll it out to ¾-inch-thick for tall biscuits, or a 1-inch-thick for giant biscuits.
AU: I love a towering biscuit with some good salted butter and a zippy jam! And a good biscuit is the calling card of lots of “proper” Southern ladies…
EK: Amen. It’s one of the first things that we learn to bake.
And, Nathalie, is a “proper” Southern lady and then some. But mostly she is a chef and the author of 15 cookbooks including “Southern Biscuits” that she wrote with Cynthia Graubart. She is generally regarded as the “Grand Dame” of Southern Cooking.
Years ago, I wrote about one of my favorite Nathalie Dupree moments when I tasted her shrimp and grits at a food festival. Her technique is as close to the original low-country fisherman’s meal as you will ever experience. The shrimp poach in the hot grits which ensures that they don’t overcook, and the juices add to the flavor like a quick shrimp stock. For the festival she added spinach and tomatoes, but you can leave those out if you want the classic version. And btw, she also wrote the book on “Shrimp and Grits.”
Besides her iconic recipes, she was way ahead of her time working in kitchens when literally no other women were doing it. She is as gracious as you would expect a Southern hostess to be and as peppery and straight forward as her cuisine.
AU: Didn’t you tell me you made a Shrimp ‘n’ Grits in your rice cooker?? I think our readers are going to need that recipe…
EK: I did and I do and it was inspired by Nathalie’s Shrimp and Grits! My rice cooker makes flawless grits which are the base for the best Shrimp ‘n Grits… I’ll put that on the list for an upcoming newsletter!
But back to the Biscuits at hand! These simple 2-ingredient biscuits are here for you anytime that you want/need a batch of fresh homemade biscuits in a fraction of the time. Because the cream is both the liquid and the fat, they come together as fast as any mix and taste 100% better! And the butter makes takes them over the top! With this recipe, there is no excuse NOT to make your biscuits from scratch.
And, finally, I urge you to mix up the butter as you butter your biscuits! I whipped up a batch of my BBQ Butter and the result was beyond fabulous!! The BBQ Butter is the same butter that I use in my Summer Corn Sauté and Lobster recipe.
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNER!
Thanks to everyone who filled out our survey last week and gave us great feedback. A special thanks to Chris Orr who won a Chef IQ Smart Thermometer for his own kitchen!! Thanks for being part of the W4D family!
RESTAURANT RIDE ALONG: YANGBAN SOCIETY
AU: This weekend I turned another year older, and per usual, I waited ‘til the last minute to actually plan anything. But I did score a table at one of the most exciting restaurants in Los Angeles, Yangban Society.
EK: Happy Birthday week! Your weekend looked amazing!
AU: Thank you! So, the married couple who owns Yangban Society—Kat and John Hong—came from a fine dining background (The Restaurant at Meadowood, The Charter Oak, and Mélisse to name a few). The concept for the restaurant draws inspiration from Korean flavors and—of course—regional California ingredients. The food is said to reflect the couple’s different perspectives and upbringings as Korean Americans, merging comfort food with fine dining technique. It’s sort of a Korean deli-meets-restaurant vibe, and everything is very very well-prepared.
Let me tell y’all… it’s one of my new favorite places! It’s casual, but with excellent food and wine. Now, was I too busy celebrating my special day to take any pictures myself?? I sure was. So the following images are from the interwebs so you can visualize the dishes we ate (credited where possible).
AU: First up, my mom surprised us by sending out a round of drinks and these amazing wings to start us off on the right foot. As you would expect from a Korean-influenced restaurant, the wings were double fried and SHATTERINGLY crispy. But saucy, too. But sweet, but spicy. THEY WERE ALL THE THINGS and they were heaven.
AU: Next up, we hopped on the biscuit train, too! These are Yangban’s layered buttermilk biscuits smothered in a Korean curry Kare gravy with ground beef & pork, carrots, onions. While this dish ain’t gonna win any beauty pageants, it was one of the most flavorful and satisfying biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had. The kimchi on the side, was almost sweet—like a savory/sweet jam that cut through the richness of the gravy. If you’d like to make these, Bon Appétit published a recipe for them here.
EK: Wow, they sound amazing. If you can figure out the sauce, I’ve got the biscuits!
AU: Then we had the chilled acorn noodles. They were light and nutty, but with a nice kick of salt from a shirodashi vinaigrette. Like a carb-y pickle to cleanse your palate after all the rich, spicy dishes. I could eat these all day. And you can! Yangban operates as a casual deli during the day, so you can drop by anytime a craving hits.
And speaking of lighter fare, a simple standout was the Shinko Pear and Avocado Salad. Big hunks of juicy pear and creamy avocado were a match made in heaven, covered in a hot mustard vinaigrette with toasted almonds, and a Yangban special seasoning of toasted nori, nutritional yeast, fried garlic, and fried shallots. This is when you can see that each dish was more than the sum of its parts—a telltale sign you’re eating food from someone with fine dining experience.
AU: For our main dishes we got steak and fish. The steak was unbelievably great and perfectly cooked. The wood-grilled sea bream, on the other hand, left a little more to be desired. Maybe I just don’t like sea bream.
Dessert came with a calvary of candles and celebratory singing! I requested harmony and my dining companions obliged. We got several things from the deli case: saucer-sized dark chocolate chip cookies, and a whipped cheesecake with a butter-coconut crust and blueberry compote… but the pièce de résistance was the buffalo milk soft serve ice cream with “the works.” If you’re wondering what “the works” means, I’ll tell you: It’s a combination of Daenjang Caramel, Chocolate Injeolmi, and Nurungi Puffed Rice (Daenjang - a soybean paste, like miso; Injeolmi - a crispy rice cake; Nurungi - “burnt” crispy rice). I admittedly had to look up what most of those words were, but it was a perfect ending to a perfect birthday.
I’ll do it. It is so good! My favorite way to make shrimp and grits!
Me too!! And these so easy and so good!!