Drop Biscuits
Drop Biscuits * how to fry bacon * using bacon grease * what “make a well” means in a recipeDrop Biscuits with Bacon and/or Cheese2 c. all-purpose flour1/2 tsp salt2 tsp baking powder4 Tbsp shortening1 c. milk1 c. shredded Cheddar (or other cheese) (optional)5-7 slices cooked bacon, cut up small (optional)Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut shortening into dry ingredients. Add cheese and/or bacon pieces. Add milk and drop in large spoonfuls on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 12-14 minutes. For rolled out biscuits decrease the milk to 2/3 cup. If you leave out both the cheese and bacon, increase the salt to one teaspoon.Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make drop biscuits, with or without cheese and/or bacon!I’d like to say this is an old family recipe passed down through generations of women, but in fact I got it from an old cookbook called Good Recipes for Hard Times that I owned in my 20s. I’ve regretted for years selling it in a yard sale but through the magic of the internet I just ordered a paperback copy. Maybe it’ll turn out to be the same copy! Actually, my copy was hardback and would be worth a whole lot today, although by the time I sold it, it was pretty battered. Like, literally battered because there was batter on some of the pages. *rimshot*Okay, so, we’ve talked about biscuits once or twice in past episodes, but we’ve never actually featured a biscuit recipe. This recipe doesn’t make the most delicious biscuit, but it is the easiest and most adaptable recipe I’ve found. I primarily use it for making bacon and cheese biscuits, or sometimes just cheese biscuits. We’re also not going to bother to roll these biscuits out. This is a recipe you can whip up quickly when you need something filling and cheap. I will warn you that if you leave the cheese and/or bacon out, the biscuits sort of taste like glue. But put enough butter and jam on them and they’re fine.For the purposes of this episode I’m going to assume that you want to make cheese and bacon biscuits. That means we need to talk about how to cook bacon before we do anything else, because you need cooked bacon for this recipe.First, of course, you need the bacon. It doesn’t matter what kind you buy, but thick cut bacon takes forever to cook. I tend to shop by price so I get the cheapest, fattiest bacon I can find—but I don’t buy bacon often these days, maybe just a few times a year. I’m also trying to cut back on the amount of sugar I eat, so this time I bought bacon that was cured without sugar, honey, or any other sweetener. It tasted fine. It tasted like bacon.Cooking bacon is messy, so when I do cook it I typically make the whole package at once. In this particular case I didn’t since I needed five strips raw for a different recipe that we’ll talk about soon. You’ll need a large, heavy skillet and make sure to either wear an old shirt or put an apron on to protect your clothes from grease.Heat the skillet to about medium low. Place the strips of bacon in the skillet while it’s still warming up, and try to position them so that as much of the bacon as possible contacts the bottom of the pan. If you’re cooking the whole package of bacon, though, you won’t have enough room, so once I fill up the bottom of the pan I just layer the rest of the bacon over the first layer but facing the other direction, so I have a criss-cross pattern of bacon. I’m not sure that makes sense. Don’t stress about it. Just separate the slices and lay them out as flat as possible.As the skillet heats, the bacon begins to cook, and as it does it releases a lot of grease and begins to shrink and curl up. After a few minutes use a spatula to loosen the bacon from the bottom, because you don’t want it to burn. Specifica