I think that you will be impressed.

Your mother is correct. I use half lard and half Irish butter for biscuits, and lard only for pie crusts. Can’t be beat for flavor and texture. Ask anyone who’s ever eaten my pies or biscuits. Butter cookies, though, are just Irish butter. Worth it.

Well now i am getting excited!

and the test batch is looking good!

I am making a mustard butter with my favorite mustard that is sweet and hot and creamy, Nance’s. I will assemble the biscuits and ham and spread the mustard on one side only then pop them in a warm oven for five or six minutes before we leave the house.

My favorite butter, when I can find it, is Finlandia. Then Irish, such as Kerrygold.

Sounds so good!

My mouth is watering. I know lard and shortening can be miraculous but I'd just as soon not know it is there!

BTW are you taking up a click-bait literary tone?

BTW are you taking up a click-bait literary tone? says she with the What makes a home look dated post! 🤣

Didn't grow up with biscuits and have only attempted a few times (without impressive results) but there are a lot of baking tips that include lard or shortening so hopefully these will meet your expectations.

One of your biscuits sounds so good right now, but I know I could not stop at one!

The ones that are splitting were scraps re-rolled, I am keeping those for DH (and myself, of course!). I cut square, or square-ish biscuits bc it wastes less dough and looks rustic.

The recipe is:

2 cups all purpose flour, not KA but a lower protein flour like Martha White

1 tblsp sugar

1 tblsp baking powder

3/4 tsp table salt

1/4 tsp MSG

3 tblsp unsalted butter, diced into 1/2” pieces, chilled

3 tblsp shortening

about 2 tblsp melted butter for brushing baked biscuits

1 scant cup buttermilk

Sift all dry ingredients together and stir to combine. Work shortening into flour mixture with your fingers. Retrieve butter from fridge and cut into flour mixture with a pastry cutter until the pieces of butter are young pea sized

Add most of the buttermilk and mix with a spoon or anything you have, I like the danish dough mixer. If the dough is stiff or you have dry flour in the

bowl still add more buttermilk until it all comes together. Dough should be soft.

Turn out on a floured surface and pat into your desired shape until it is about 1/2 to 3/4” high. Cut round or square biscuits, re-patting the scraps for sad-looking but still delicious orphan biscuits. This recipe makes about six or seven BIG biscuits or eight ir nine normal sized ones.

Cook on parchment paper on an ungreased baking sheet at 450 until they are golden brown, avout 15 min. Brush with melted butter immediately as they come out of the oven.

And yes! the thread tirle was meant to be total clickbait but I guess I need to refine the technique bc as you can see it did not work 😎

I’ve never seen msg called for in this sort of a recipe where there aren’t seasoning flavors to be amped up. What do you think it contributes?

Glad you asked that, Lisa. Biscuits are savory with the umami taste of butter, and any savory taste is improved with glutamates. The rule of thumb is to reduce the amount of salt by a quarter teaspoon and add a quarter tsp of MSG. Just as salt makes things taste like more of whatever it’s added to, so does msg. I would not use it in a brioche dough or a cookie or other primarily sweet baked goods, but it is great in savory yeasted doughs like pizza and dinner rolls (except milk bread or again, brioche type rolls).

Wow - I haven’t made a biscuit since 7th grade home ec.

I didn't see if you posted your final results. Did they live up to your memory? If not, I think some things are different with Crisco (and probably other brands if you use something different) these days. I tried to research the different changes they've made since I was young, but it's really sketchy and confusing. They have had fully hydrogenated shortening and partially hydrogenated; they've taken out most of the trans fats and they have used many different kinds of vegetable oils over the years in their shortening.

I know that I used to make beautiful pie crust with Crisco many years ago but something changed maybe 20 years ago and I've never liked the results since. The texture of the actual shortening was different. And I found it would go rancid, but I don't think that ever happened many years ago. It always seemed fresh even if it had been in the pantry for a while. So I gave up on Crisco pie crust and have switched to a great oil recipe. I wonder if you don't get perfect results if that could be why. The shortening of our youth is no more.

You’re right, Oly, the shortening is not as dense or stiff as it used to be, so I actually froze it for the subsequent batches. It still was much softer than the cold butter so i ended up cutting in the butter first then working in the shortening instead of the other way around.

The end results are very good tasting; basically I think the all butter biscuits are simply too buttery and taste too much like pie dough instead of the biscuits I liked as a child. Those were made with all shortening or lard and the buttery taste came from butter added to the finished product. Modern Crisco is just not firm enough to give the same height and flaky results to be used by itself, but I do like the flavor of the half butter / half Crisco biscuits better. And I am going to try lard just to see if that is really the key to the best height, flakiness and flavor.

I make a warm cream biscuit from an ATK recipe that tastes great and is the fastest method but it is really best suited for eating with jam— nothing wrong with that, but it doesnt stand up to ham, sausage or sausage gravy. I also make and like a KA oil recipe for pie crust that is great for cream pies or mousse based recipes. I’ve found that fruit pies need a thicker, stronger and less sandy textured crusts so I use an ATK recipe that calls for an egg and sour cream to replace all the water in the crust aand it comes out perfectly every time. I also use it for chicken pie, leek pie, quiche crust and other savory pies, simply leaving out the sugar.

Your biscuits sound and look delicious!

I have not bought Crisco in years. My mother always used it for her pie crusts so I followed her lead. I can still visualize the can as well as seeing a stick of lard. Thank you for your detailed explanation.

I used to make a 2/3 butter, 1/3 crisco pie crust and it was never-fail. Over the past few years I found it less so, and have phased out the crisco entirely and have gone full bore butter. You can't beat the taste.

They look brown, like you used wheat flour? I'm glad your experiment worked!

I make biscuits. Then put bacon or a sausage patty, poached egg, slice of cheese on them...then DH eats them for breakfast. McDonalds has made a fortune selling these! 😂I don't ever use msg...but hey...whatever.

I’m glad you are experimenting, kswl. My brother makes the best biscuits; the kind we recall from childhood that melts in your mouth. My dear aunt (now 96) still does too. Both use all shortening, and of course my aunt used lard back in the day because they had their own rendered from the hogs on their farm.

I agree, the product we buy today does seem softer than what we used back when I first started cooking. I always used it for pie crusts too when I first started baking because my mother did.

As for the biscuits. my brother uses a large cookie scoop, rolls them in flour and bakes in an iron skillet. We had about 3 large skillets of biscuits going at Christmas when my family came over for breakfast. I froze a few of the leftovers and they were great later.

HAHA! Yesterday I kept wanting to reply to your title! OK then I'm going to do it tonight too!!! Naughty me!! Sometimes my mind just goes to the gutter LOL. The biscuits sound delish! My mother and grandmother also used part shortening in their biscuits. I despise the look/texture of Crisco, but there is a cookie I make that absolutely is not the same, not as good without the crisco that the recipe calls for. I usually buy one of the small cans near the holidays for those cookies. Enjoy your breakfast! I'm sure your biscuits will be a hit. : )

Lol, Tina 😎

The biscuits were very well received. I used uncured, smoked ham in 1/3” slices and sauteed them in a bit of strong coffee and dark brown sugar. After splitting the biscuits i used a honey, butter and mustard mixture on the biscuit for half of them and just honey butter on the other dozen, in case anyone didn't like mustard. After assembling the biscuits back on cleaned baking trays I misted them with water and put in the oven for five min, then removed, brushed honey butter on the tops and covered with foil. The breakfast was held at our amenity center just a mile away so everything was still warm when I put them out. Another neighbor had made sausage biscuits and I really wanted to try one but honestly I am so over biscuits right now that Ididn’t even eat one of my own. There were several breakfast casseroles, coffee cakes, muffins, donuts and fruit in addition to the biscuits. (It was about 3x the amount of food needed.) I had a lovely plate of fruit as very heavy food doesn’t appeal to me in the morning. I did bring home a few of my biscuits that were left over, so DH and I will have those for lunch. We are having a pork tenderloin, new potatoes and carrots and vidalia onion gratin for our pre- theater dinner tonight. Hopefully I will not be cooking much for a few days!