Tag: biscuits

One-pan fried* crispy chicken biscuit

*baked in an oven

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | Leave a Comment on One-pan fried* crispy chicken biscuit

Let’s get a few things straight. Fried food is awesome. Fried chicken is crispy and adds great texture to a sandwich. But the process of frying isn’t always so fun or pleasant.

Pros:

  • Crispy fried chicken tastes great.
  • Frying food is usually quick.
  • The crunch.

Cons:

  • Frying is messy.
  • Frying uses up a lot of oil.
  • Frying food can be less healthy than other cooking options.
Two crispy oven baked chicken thighs.

I think my biggest problem with frying food is the mess. Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot more time in the kitchen and whenever I fry something, it easily takes me twice the amount of time for cleanup. Oil splatters all over the place and your pan and utensils require extra care in cleaning.

Because of this, I decided to try to recreate some of the excitement and enjoyment of eating a fried chicken biscuit without the frying part.

I was looking up baked chicken tender recipes online and noticed that most of them are baked around 425- or 450-degrees F (230 C), which is only 25 degrees lower than my normal biscuit recipe. This led me to a train of thought where I could possibly bake the biscuits and the chicken at around the same time and oven temp.

Guess what? It works.

Once you get the biscuit dough together, you can dredge your chicken thigh (or breast meat/tenders) and bake the biscuits and the chicken on the same sheet pan.

One sheet pan with two future sandwiches on it. Note that the chicken side has aluminum foil that has been heavily sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.

The biscuits

The biscuit recipe I use is in the recipe down below, but I figured I’d talk about it a bit here. I rarely bake a whole batch of biscuits at once these days. We’re a two-person household so there’s no need for us to have 7 or 8 biscuits at one time. Biscuits keep for a few days, but I find it more convenient to freeze the biscuits prior to baking if I don’t plan to eat them immediately.

This batch of biscuits bakes almost the same whether they are frozen or not. I think you might not get quite the amount of rise from a frozen biscuit, but they cook at the same oven temperature and almost the same time. You might need a couple of extra minutes on a frozen biscuit to fully brown the top. So, I suggest freezing biscuits so you can have them whenever the urge strikes you.

The chicken

You can cook this recipe with chicken thighs, breast meat or chicken tenders. If you’re going with chicken breast meat, I suggest you butterfly the breasts to make the meat a little thinner to ensure even cooking in the time required by the recipe. Anything thicker than 3/4 of an inch might not get fully cooked in 20 minutes. If you’re worried about that, I suggest you check with an instant read thermometer before biscuit sandwich time.

The whole recipe

Check out the whole recipe and give it a try next time you crave a chicken biscuit sandwich. If you’re too big of a “chicken” and afraid of making your own biscuits, you can skip that part and use the chicken part of the recipe for chicken tenders or another type of chicken sandwich. But I think you should try making biscuits.

You can also do this recipe with store bought frozen biscuits or the kind in the “can.” But those probably won’t cook at the same time or temperature, so you’ll have to cook them separately. In this case, I suggest cooking the biscuits first and chicken second.

One-pan crispy chicken biscuit
Recipe
One-pan crispy chicken biscuit
One-pan crispy chicken biscuit view printable page for this recipe

All of the taste and excitement of a fried chicken biscuit sandwich without all the messy frying part. Oven-baked panko coated chicken thighs cook at the same time and temperature as my biscuit recipe making this an easy one pan meal. The biscuit recipe is based off of Southern Living's buttermilk biscuit recipe.

Tags:

Ingredients:

Buttermilk biscuits
  • 300 grams self rising flour (2.5 cups)
  • 1 frozen stick of butter (1/2 cup)
  • 1 cup buttermilk
Crispy oven baked chicken
  • 2 sandwich sized chicken thighs (you can use breast meat too, see notes below)
  • 1⁄4 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
  • 3 tablespoons hot sauce (your favorite brand)
  • 3⁄4 cup panko bread crumbs
  • 2 teaspoons paprika
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
  • non-stick cooking spray (Pam or another brand)

Directions:

Biscuits: Using a box grater, grate frozen butter into the sifted self rising flour. Stir to combine until the butter is fully coated by flour. Put bowl in freezer for 10 minutes 

Combine buttermilk to bring together as a dough. Stir no more than 15 times. Overworking the dough at this stage could cause your finished biscuits to be more tough.  

On a floured surface dump out dough and roll with a rolling pin. Dust with flour as needed when dough gets sticky. Fold the dough over on itself five different times creating layers. Roll dough to 1/2 or 3/4 inch thick.

Cut biscuits into circles or squares and place on a piece of parchment paper. When cutting, you do not want to twist the cutter. Twisting while cutting will ruin the layers that you created with folding. 

Once all your biscuits are cut, place the parchment paper on a sheet pan into a freezer if you want to freeze the biscuits to cook later. If you plan to cook the whole batch now, pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees F (230 C). If you choose to freeze the biscuits, leave in the freezer for an hour on the sheet pan until they get hard enough to move to a zip top bag or freezer package of your choice. They will still bake at 450 F (230 C) for just about the same amount of time. 

Crispy chicken: Get your chicken thighs out of the refrigerator and start to set up your chicken dredging station. You will need three bowls for this. 

The first bowl will contain your all purpose flour. Add a pinch of salt and black pepper to the flour.  

The second bowl will contain your whole egg, mayonnaise and hot sauce. Add these three ingredients and whisk to combine well. 

The third bowl will have the panko bread crumbs, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. whisk to combine. 

Line half of a sheet pan with aluminum foil. The other side should have a piece of parchment paper. 

Spray the aluminum foil side with cooking spray, this is where your chicken will go. 

For each chicken thigh, coat with flour in the flour bowl, then dip into the egg mixture (ensuring that it's fully coated everywhere) and finally press into the panko bread crumbs until each piece is fully coated. Place on the cooking spray sprayed aluminum foil. 

Spray the top of each piece of chicken with cooking spray, this will help the chicken brown and crisp up better. 

Place your uncooked biscuits on the parchment paper side of the sheet pan and place it in the oven when it is fully up to temperature. 

Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and flip each chicken thigh. Spray the top side of the chicken again with cooking spray. 

Bake for another 10 minutes. At this point your chicken should be done and you can remove it to a wire rack to rest. Your biscuits might or might not need an extra minute or two. Check the tops of your biscuits and if they're not brown enough, cook for another 2 or 3 minutes, keeping an eye on them so that they do not brown too much. 

Once the biscuits are browned to your liking, remove from the oven. Split each biscuit and add a crispy chicken thigh and any condiments you might want and enjoy. 

Notes:

Chicken: If you want to use breast meat, you will probably need to butterfly the meat so that it is thin enough to cook in time. Your meat needs to be no more than 3/4 of an inch thick to ensure that it is cooked sufficiently in 20 minutes. Chicken tenders would work well at this oven time and temperature if you want to use those. 

Biscuits: If you're using store bought biscuits, you will need to check the time/temperature and follow the instructions on the package. This one pan method works because the biscuit recipe I use works well with the time/temperature that the chicken needs to cook at. 

More crispy chicken biscuit sandwiches

Add a little honey mustard and you’re in heaven.

If you like your fried chicken biscuits with honey mustard, this is a great recipe you might be interested in

Honey mustard sauce
Recipe Card
Honey mustard sauce
10 minutes
Honey mustard sauce

Add a fantastic pop of flavor to a sandwich or make this sauce as a dip for your next chicken tender night.

Get Recipe
This one has pickled jalapenos and a creamy chipotle sauce.

Below is my recipe for a chipotle sauce. It’s great on tacos, nachos, burgers and chicken sandwiches. Try it on your next sausage biscuit. You may remember, I used it in my Crispy Chicken Sandwich Taco post.

Spicy Chipotle Sauce
Recipe Card
Spicy Chipotle Sauce
10 minutes
Spicy Chipotle Sauce

Similar to the sauce they have at Taco Bell, this is a flavor explosion that can be added to pretty much any sandwich.

Get Recipe
A little melted cheddar makes every chicken biscuit better.
One-pan crispy chicken biscuit sandwich with a spicy avocado salsa. I bought the avocado salsa from the deli section of our local grocery.

This is a fairly easy recipe to replicate a fried chicken biscuit at home with less guilt. It totally scratches my chicken biscuit itch without leaving my kitchen covered in splattered oil. I’d love to hear what you think if you try this recipe.

Comment down below or tag @beerinator in your instagrams or tweets!

You ain’t nothin’ but a corndog.

Any sandwich is paw-sible if you put your mind to it.

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | Leave a Comment on You ain’t nothin’ but a corndog.

This week I turned corndogs into sandwiches.

Yeah, that’s it. That’s the tweet. I turned corndogs into sandwiches.

If you’re from a foreign country or planet that doesn’t have a corndog, they are pretty simple. A corndog is typically a hot dog or sausage, battered in a sweetened cornmeal batter and fried until the outside is crispy and golden brown. Then you squirt mustard on the outside or you find condiments to dip in and go to town eating a corndog on a stick.

There’s no need to turn a corndog into a sandwich but I did it anyway because no one tells me what to do.

The corndog

This week is extra corny, so we’re changing things up and instead of starting with the bread, we’ll start with the corndog recipe I use. This recipe is for making actual corndogs on a stick, but as you’ll soon see, you could turn any sort of sausage or meat patty into something that is corndog battered and fried until crispy and still soft between the outside and the dog.

Corndogs
Recipe Card
Corndogs
32 minutes
Corndogs

Corndogs are great and when you make them at home you have full control of the sausages used. Try a polish sausage, your favorite local hot dog brand or even turkey dogs if you want something a little healthier (healthy corndogs - hah!).

Get Recipe

I have typed the word corndog so many times at this point it’s out of control. Just wait.

A crazy person.

For my corndog sandwiches I used both hot dogs and also some breakfast sausage that I cooked up into circular patties. Here are some of the pictures of the buildup and frying process.

Butterflied half dogs on the left and cooked patties of breakfast sausage on the right. I didn’t fry all these at once. I did one type one day and one type the next day. I’m not fully crazy. Just a little bit.
Frying some of the butterflied hot dogs.
The post fried cooked sausage patties.

I like to use chopsticks as the stick in my corndogs. I believe the food genius Alton Brown taught me this. The disposable chopsticks that haven’t been separated from each other are solid and just wide enough to be a great handle for a fried corndog. This is the batch of chopsticks that I have purchased (Amazon affiliate link) and you can also use them to work on your General Tso chomping technique in your non-corndog time as well.

Or if you need some chopsticks, you can just order delivery Chinese and make sure to click the “no utensils required” and they will send you some anyway! Sorry, this is my specific annoyance, please ignore. Next.

The bread

For some of these sandwiches I had a few leftover potato rolls from past sandwiches. I also always have homemade biscuits in the freezer waiting for their turn to be baked. In this case they were my savory cheddar cheese biscuit recipe.

Biscuits baked from frozen

When I make a batch of biscuits, I often will only cook two or three and immediately put the rest in the freezer to firm up. Basically, I take two sheet pans both lined with parchment. One is headed to the oven and the other goes into the freezer with the uncooked biscuits I want to save. After three hours or so the freezer biscuits are pretty firm and you can take the sheet pan out and package all the biscuits up in freezer safe packaging. Freezing them on a sheet pan like this makes it easy to reach in and grab one or two biscuits for cooking later.

If you want to cook a homemade frozen biscuit, you can bake at the same temperature (I use 475 F/245 C) and I cook for two or three minutes longer than the time I would cook a fully thawed biscuit. The one thing you need to pay attention to is the bottom of the biscuits; they tend to darken quicker than the tops in my oven. Often if I’m making biscuits straight out of the freezer, I will double stack two sheet pans to give the bottom a bit more insulation and protection from the heat.

Here’s my savory cheddar cheese biscuit recipe that makes a fantastic sandwich.

Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
Recipe Card
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
40 minutes
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits

These savory biscuits are great on their own and even better with chicken or pork for a breakfast sandwich.

Get Recipe

The sandwiches

These first two sandwiches are on the same batch of cheddar cheese biscuits. They are corndog battered breakfast pork sausage patties topped with maple mustard. This was better than I expected. The corndog exterior had just the right amount of crunch and the texture of the sausage patty beside the soft interior of the cooked cornbread led to a great experience.

Corndog battered and fried breakfast sausage patty with maple mustard on a cheddar cheese biscuit.
After you pull out the chop stick you’re left with a hole that makes it look like you made a sandwich with a jelly doughnut in the middle. Hrm, that gives me an idea…

As you saw in the photos above, I also butterflied some hot dogs that I had cut in half and fried those in corndog batter as well. These I sandwiched with some maple mustard and topped them with pickle relish. This sandwich was also a lot of fun to eat. Corndogs are just plain fun, sandwich or no sandwich.

Butterflied hot dog, corndog battered and fried with maple mustard and sweet pickle relish.
A little cross-section time. This is not the same as the other corndog sandwich in a bun. The butterflied dog gives you a wider section to the sandwich which ends up taking up more bun space. In this case it actually gave space for the relish to spread out.
Another corndog battered and fried breakfast sausage patty with just plain yellow mustard this time.

If you’ve read this far, I bet you thought I was finished for the week.

Maangchi’s Gamja-hotdog sandwich

AKA: the Goblin Club sandwich

If you’re a reasonable sandwich person you can stop here and come back and read about sandwiches next week.

If you’re like me and have mostly lost your mind, please continue and read about how I attempted to turn Maangchi’s recipe for a Gamja-hotdog into a sandwich. If you’ve never heard of Maangchi, you need to go watch some of her videos. She’s great.

I mentioned in passing that I was writing a blog post about turning corndogs into sandwiches with my friend JP and she immediately sent me Maangchi’s “Korean french fries corndog” video. In the video Maangchi mentions that sometimes this style of fried hot dog on a stick is referred to as a goblin club because of how it looks like a lumpy club a fictional goblin might carry when the gamja-hotdog is cooked. Here’s a video you can watch of Maangchi making hers.

So I watched the video and then attempted it.

First I sliced a hot dog 2/3rds of the way through all the way down. I broke apart my chopsticks and I skewered the butterflied hot dog in two places (there’s a photo of this below). I did it this way because I felt it might be tough to flip over in the hot frying oil. This turned out to be a pretty good idea.

Then I followed Maangchi’s instructions and par-boiled some very small squares of potato. I also prepared the batter which is really nothing like corndog batter. It’s much more like a sticky very hydrated bread dough.

I set my batter, the pre-cooked potatoes and some panko breadcrumbs on my counter and this became my breading station. You can see below or in Maangchi’s video how the “batter” isn’t really much like pancake or corndog batter.

Each dog (I just made two this time) would go through the batter first, then get rolled into the potatoes and finally dusted with the panko breadcrumbs prior to submerging into the hot frying oil.

My breading station. From top, Gamja hotdog batter, par cooked potatoes and at the bottom are panko breadcrumbs.
Hot dog on a stick going into the very sticky batter.

Once fried, your Korean Gamja-hotdog will look very lumpy and a little bit crazy. Apparently, it’s supposed to look like that. Maangchi dusts hers with white sugar and then squirts ketchup and mustard on them, so I did that as well. You can see the finished product still on the sticks below.

BEFORE the battering and frying
AFTER the fry and condimenting

The final Gamja-hotdog sandwich.

Oh no. That crazy sandwich guy put it on a bun. Why do they let him do this.

I’m not sure why anyone allows me to do this, but for once, it worked out and this was a fun sandwich to eat. It’s crispy fried french fries and a hot dog on a bun! What could go wrong?

The Maangchi Gamja-hotdog turned into a sandwich. Literally batter fried hot dog and french fries all rolled into one thing. How can that be bad?

Why did I make corndog sandwiches? No one will ever know. Will I do it again? Probably not. BUT I will be making corndogs again because they really are easy and allow you a lot of freedom to incorporate different sausages. Corndogs are just fun!

We’ll see you all next week when I have a little bit more sense and make a much more normal sandwich. Maybe.

The King of breakfast sandwiches

You probably never sausage a sandwich!

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | 1 Comment on The King of breakfast sandwiches

I get really excited about the sausage, egg and cheese biscuit. This is definitely my favorite breakfast sandwich and would be my go to selection at a fast food breakfast joint. This week I made a bunch and if you continue reading you’ll learn about the process I use to make these at home.

The biscuits

The base biscuit recipe I use is from Southern Living magazine (youtube link). It requires three ingredients and is fairly easy to get right. If the idea of keeping buttermilk around in your fridge seems wasteful, you can also buy buttermilk powder at the grocery store and follow this recipe from The Kitchenista Diaries.

I’ve already written a little bit about biscuits and I have three different flavor versions (two savory and a sweet one) in my recipe archive. Go read that if you have never made biscuits before and then come back here to read the rest of my process for sausage, egg and cheese.

The tools

This set of biscuit/cookie cutters (Amazon affiliate link) is very similar to the ones that I have. I bought mine so long ago that I don’t know where we purchased them, but I like having many different sizes. I like to bake a bigger size biscuit if I’m making a sandwich, but we usually choose a smaller size if we’re having biscuits on the side of a plate of breakfast.

Another tool that I use even more often than a rolling pin when making biscuits is a bench scraper. This is a great scraper set (Amazon affiliate link) for right around 10 bucks. It has three scrapers included. The orange plastic one I almost never use, but the red curved one is great for bread baking and getting dough out of a bowl and the metal one is what I use for biscuits and scooping and folding during the folding/layer making process. Buy this or find another bench scraper if you’re planning to make biscuits a regular thing at your house.

The sausage

Forming patties with a ring mold

I don’t usually make my own sausage blend for breakfast sandwiches. Typically I just buy bulk breakfast sausage in the tube and I form my own patties.

Forming my own means that I can get the shapes and sizes that I want. Since I already know how big my biscuit is (because I know what size biscuit cutter I used) I use a similarly sized cutter (or a slightly larger one – meat will shrink once cooked) and I spread a tiny bit of canola oil on the inside of the ring and I use it to shape my patties. The oil keeps things from sticking. Sometimes I freeform shape each patty – that’s also a very easy option – but when I’m feeling fancy and precise I use the ring mold.

Cooking each patty for 4 or 5 minutes per side on a medium-high heat should get you to a fully done stage of sausage patty goodness.

Egg options

The folded egg

A folded egg is way better for a biscuit sandwich than scrambled eggs. If you’ve ever put scrambled eggs on a sandwich, you know that you’re about to have a mess on your hands with the scrambled curds falling out. With a folded egg, you have a solid but still soft piece of egg that shouldn’t make a mess. You’re pretty much making an omelet here, with nothing but salt and pepper added.

Sausage folded egg and cheese biscuit. The king of breakfast sandwiches.

Here’s a short slideshow of how I prepare a folded egg. The whole process takes about 1 minute of cooking time plus whatever time it takes you to get your surface hot. I like to do it in a flat griddle so I can flip things easier. I usually try to get the hot surface up to between 275 and 350 F (that’s around 177 C).

  • Start with a small pat of butter.
  • When the butter is foaming and bubbly you can add your already mixed up egg with salt and pepper
  • Let the egg spread out. You can use your spatula to scrape some of the raw egg on top off onto the hot surface to help it all cook faster.
  • Fold one side over like a letter or pamphlet.
  • This is one side folded over.
  • Then fold the other side of the egg letter/pamphlet over on top.
  • Fold the omelet again into more of a biscuit/sandwich sized egg. And you’re done.

The round egg

A “round egg” is the egg preparation you’ll find on an Egg McMuffin at McDonald’s. A folded egg is what you’ll find on a biscuit sandwich. Many McDonald’s enthusiasts prefer the round egg more than a folded one because it requires the McD’s cook to use a fresh egg instead of a pre-cooked folded one. In our DIY make-at-home versions they’re all fresh eggs, so that part doesn’t matter very much, it’s more about the effort you want to put into it.

I don’t like to cook the round egg very much, but I still cooked one for this post. The main reason I don’t like a round egg is because you have to cook it pretty well through in order for it to retain its shape in the ring mold. I like my eggs a bit softer and less done. If you like yours more well done then this might be a fun option for you, but I much prefer the folded egg option.

If you want to cook a round egg, I would grab the same ring mold that you used to cut out your biscuit and you place that on a hot surface. Make sure if you’re doing this on a non-stick surface pay close attention so that you do not scratch the surface with the metal mold. Grease the ring mold first with some vegetable oil and pour your egg into it. I like to stir the egg a little once its in the mold and cooking to make sure that the yolk gets cracked and mixed in a bit with the white. Cook for a couple of minutes until it seems like the sides are set inside the mold. With tongs, carefully remove the ring mold and flip the egg to finish it cooking on the top side.

A round egg

The microwaved egg

Chef José Andrés shared this trick on tiktok and a friend shared it with me. It’s basically one egg mixed very thoroughly with one spoonful of mayonnaise. I was skeptical, but I tried it and it worked fairly well. I like my scrambled eggs on the softer side of things so I might play around with the timing on the microwave to get a better result. Sixty seconds for me was a bit too long, but to have an egg that is the perfect size for a biscuit sandwich in less than 2 minutes is fantastic (gotta count the cracking and scooping and stirring time too).

If the idea of mayonnaise in your scrambled eggs makes you squirm, just remember that mayo is simply oil and egg yolks mixed together with seasoning (and if store bought, preservatives).

Here’s Chef Andrés explaining his technique. A photo of my attempt at the microwaved egg is below.

@chefjoseandres

Omelette in the microwave 🤯🧪💥 #learnontiktok #tiktokpartner #science

♬ original sound – José Andrés
The Jose Andres microwaved egg trick with a couple dribbles of hot sauce.

Sausage gravy

Gravy isn’t a typical ingredient in a sausage egg and cheese biscuit, but it’s good to know how to make a quick sausage gravy for a breakfast. Here’s my recipe but read below if you want to know my gravy ratio and methods to make gravy on the fly.

Sausage gravy
Recipe Card
Sausage gravy
Sausage gravy

Everyone should know how to make sausage gravy. You never know when there will be a gravy emergency and you will have to step up and save the world. You should be prepared.

Get Recipe

If you want to keep things really simple, the sausage gravy I usually make is made up of 2 parts oil/grease, 2 parts all-purpose flour and 16 parts of liquid. This means you can use 2 tablespoons of leftover fat/grease from cooking sausage in a pan, 2 tablespoons of flour and 1 cup of milk (16 tablespoons to a cup) to make a sausage gravy. I’ve had good success scaling the recipe up to double and halving the recipe as well. Since I was only eating one biscuit here, I used 1 tablespoon sausage grease, 1 tablespoon of flour and a half cup of milk. If you’re going to adjust anything in this gravy ratio, you can adjust the milk/liquid. If you add more, you just may need to cook it a bit longer to reduce and thicken the gravy.

If you’ve just finished cooking the sausage and your pan is still hot you can remove all but 2 tablespoons of grease from the pan (add some vegetable oil if you don’t have quite enough in the pan) and then spoon in your two tablespoons of flour. Stir this around over medium heat for a couple of minutes and this will cook off the flour taste. Add your milk and stir everything to combine. Cook over medium heat, stirring often until you get the gravy consistency that you desire. It’s that simple.

Sausage gravy and folded egg

And those are some options for how you can make the King of Breakfast Biscuits. You can choose your own adventure with the egg options, but my favorite for visual appeal is the folded egg. For ease and quickness, that microwaved egg trick is pretty special. If I’m already cooking sausage patties and my pan or griddle is hot I will keep folding eggs.

The bonus biscuit

I’ll finish out this sausage, egg and cheese post with an extra cheesy surprise. This is my super savory cheddar cheese biscuit recipe with yellow mustard, sausage, cheddar and a folded egg for you to look at and think about until you make your next biscuit sandwiches. Stay tuned for next week when I’ll be writing about even more cheese!

The cheddar attack: a savory cheddar cheese biscuit, mustard, sausage, melted cheddar and a folded egg.
Heart shaped biscuit

Let’s talk about biscuits

I love biscuits and you should too.

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | 3 Comments on Let’s talk about biscuits

I’m a big fan of biscuits which is due in no small part to the fact that I’m also a big fan of butter.

When I first started making my own biscuits a few years back, I began with drop biscuits. If you’re not familiar with that sort of biscuit, it just means that instead of rolling and folding biscuit dough, you scoop or “drop” the dough onto a cast iron skillet or pan. I’m not 100% sure why I started with that variety of biscuit, but I’m guessing it seemed a little less intimidating at the time. The doughs and ingredients are similar, but a folded, layered biscuit just has a much more appealing look to me.

When I started looking for biscuit recipes that were more similar to the type that I had eaten in restaurants growing up in North Carolina, I stumbled upon the video below from Southern Living Magazine and it’s still the main recipe I fall back on when I’m not engaging in biscuit experiments.

Here’s a direct link to the written recipe for the above video, if you’re more of a reader than a watcher: Southern Living biscuits. Come back when you’re done reading and we’ll keep talking.

The simplicity of this recipe is due in part to only requiring three ingredients, but the genius of the recipe is frozen butter. By grating the butter after it’s frozen, you get consistent mixture with the flour and your butter stays really cold. The temperature of your butter is very important because you want it to survive unmelted in the oven for as long as possible. The steam that comes from the butter melting in the oven will actually help the biscuits rise taller. There’s a step in the Southern Living biscuit recipe that calls for you putting your flour/butter mixture back into the freezer. This is also very important for keeping that butter (now incorporated with flour) cold.

There are also several really helpful tips in that recipe.

  1. If you’re cutting your biscuits into circles DO NOT twist your biscuit cutter. After working hard to fold your dough multiple times, twisting the cutter will also twist the layers of your uncooked biscuit, leaving you with a biscuit that won’t rise as well.
  2. Bake your biscuits close together. When you put your cut biscuits onto your baking sheet and the biscuits are touching, they will create more steam and if touching they will help each other rise.
  3. Baste your biscuits with melted butter when they come out. I also do this with some of the sandwich rolls I bake. I like the way the finished product looks, but it also makes the top much more flavorful.

I could stop here and just let you make those Southern Living biscuits for the rest of your life because they are basically foolproof and very tasty, but instead I’m going to introduce you to three variations that I have come up with. All three of these take the base of the Southern Living recipe and expand on it.

Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
Recipe Card
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
40 minutes
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits

These savory biscuits are great on their own and even better with chicken or pork for a breakfast sandwich.

Get Recipe
Blueberry biscuits
Recipe Card
Blueberry biscuits
35 minutes
Blueberry biscuits

This is an attempt at a copycat recipe for Bojangle's Bo-berry biscuit. If you like sweet and savory combinations in your food, you might enjoy this with a fried pork sausage patty or slice of ham.

Get Recipe
Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits
Recipe Card
Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits
Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits

A little bit of green onion changes a plain biscuit into something a little more fancy.

Get Recipe
Cheddar cheese biscuit with fried chicken

Cheese on cheese on cheese

You like cheese!? I like cheese!

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | Leave a Comment on Cheese on cheese on cheese

My wife bought a box of white cheddar grooves and when we opened them we learned that this box was magical. A bunch of the crackers in the box were very heavily seasoned with the white cheddar flavor dust. Most were so full of dust that you could no longer see the “grooves.” Of course when something phenomenal like this happens in your life, you tweet about it and I did.

Magical Box of Cheez-it Grooves!

One of the replies to my tweet boldly told me I should use cheez-its as the coating on some fried chicken. I read the reply at 4 am and realized that the lunch portion of my day was planned.

The day before, I had baked up a batch of my savory cheddar cheese biscuits and I had also made a batch of cheddar beer cheese spread for crackers and snack time.

Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
Recipe Card
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits
40 minutes
Super savory cheddar cheese biscuits

These savory biscuits are great on their own and even better with chicken or pork for a breakfast sandwich.

Get Recipe
Cheddar Beer Cheese Spread
Recipe Card
Cheddar Beer Cheese Spread
15 minutes
Cheddar Beer Cheese Spread

Cheese spreads aren\'t only for crackers. Spread on any sandwich for a burst of extra cheesy flavor.

Get Recipe

Put those two recipes together and add a cheez-it coated fried chicken thigh and that’s a sandwich all figured out.

For the chicken, I basically made my normal buttermilk fried chicken (recipe below) except when it came time for breading, I brought each thigh from the buttermilk marinade, coated with the seasoned flour, then I put it back in the buttermilk marinade and finally I crusted each thigh in crushed up cheez-its. Then I rested them for a few minutes while my oil heated up and fried according to the recipe.

Here’s the cheez-it frying in action. Glorious.


Buttermilk fried chicken thighs
Recipe
Buttermilk fried chicken thighs
Buttermilk fried chicken thighs view printable page for this recipe

A quick and easy recipe to prepare fried chicken for sandwiches. The cayenne gives it some heat. You can omit that if you don't want it spicy or even double it if you're extra bold.

Tags:

Ingredients:

Buttermilk marinade
  • 1.5 cups buttermilk
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon paprika
  • 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs (or breast meat cut into sandwich size pieces)
Seasoned flour
  • 1.5 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon paprika
  • peanut oil for frying

Directions:

  1. Add salt, pepper cayenne pepper and paprika to buttermilk and whisk to combine. Put chicken in a zip top bag or bowl with a lid. Pour buttermilk marinade over chicken and store in fridge for at least an hour or overnight. 
  2. Make seasoned flour by combining flour with all of the spices, salt and pepper in a bowl or pan that is large enough for a piece of chicken to lay flat in the flour. 
  3. Remove one piece of chicken at a time from the marinade and dredge in the seasoned flour mixture until thoroughly coated on all sides. Place fully coated chicken onto a piece of parchment or the rack of a sheet pan to rest. 
  4. Heat 2 inches of peanut oil in a skillet to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). 
  5. Fry each piece of chicken for 6 to 7 minutes or until it reaches 165 degrees internal temperature. You'll probably want to fry for 3 minutes on the first side and then flip it to make sure you're getting the level of browning that you want. Continue cooking on the other side. 
  6. After frying, place finished chicken on a cooling rack over paper towels to drain some of the oil away. 

Notes:

A boneless skinless fried chicken thigh is usually a really good size for a biscuit or sandwich on a small bun. Typically a breast could be too large for your bun, so you may want to butterfly it or cut it into a shape that will more closely fit your bun or bread choice.


The final Cheez-it biscuit sandwich

Cheez-it crusted fried chicken thigh with cheddar beer cheese spread on a cheddar cheese biscuit.
The Uva sandwich

The Uva from Bojangles

Fried chicken = great
Pimento cheese = great
Blueberry biscuit = great
What could go wrong?

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt | 1 Comment on The Uva from Bojangles

In January 2021, a Sports Anchor/Reporter named Mike Uva from South Carolina drove to a nearby Bojangles and ordered a Pimento Cheese Cajun Filet Biscuit (spicy fried chicken with pimento cheese spread on a buttery biscuit) and was shocked to find that the Bojangles employee swapped his buttery biscuit for a sweetened blueberry biscuit (Bojangles calls these Bo-Berry Biscuits and they are sweet biscuits topped with a sugary glaze). Uva tweeted about it with a photo and seemed worried at first, but soon learned that it was a tempting combination that Bojangles might want to lean in to.

Here’s his original tweet:

Bojangles was tagged and their social media team decided to run with it. Between Uva’s and Bojangle’s promotion of the tweet it seemed to catch traction in the South Eastern states where you can find Bojangles. Over the next few days Uva shared and retweeted many photos that his followers had shared with him of their experience with what people were now calling “The Uva.”

Bojangles marketing team eventually cooked up the following tweet with a much more impressive looking breakfast sandwich.

At this point, I figured I had to make it. Read on to see how I tackled it.

Pimento cheese

I started with my Mom’s pimento cheese recipe.

Mom's pimento cheese
Recipe Card
Mom's pimento cheese
20 minutes
Mom's pimento cheese

An awesome addition to a sausage biscuit sandwich. This is my Mom's recipe. Growing up, I enjoyed a lot of pimento cheese sandwiches, with just the spread and sliced bread. This recipe also works great as a snack with crackers or pretzels.

Get Recipe

Fried chicken

And a quick and dirty recipe I use fairly often to fry chicken for a sandwich or for chicken tenders.

Buttermilk fried chicken thighs
Recipe Card
Buttermilk fried chicken thighs
35 minutes
Buttermilk fried chicken thighs

A quick and easy recipe to prepare fried chicken for sandwiches. The cayenne gives it some heat. You can omit that if you don't want it spicy or even double it if you're extra bold.

Get Recipe

Blueberry biscuit

After I had my cheese and chicken sorted, I started working on a plan for a Bojangles Bo-Berry biscuit copy cat recipe. I began with my typical Buttermilk biscuit and added some sugar. Since it wasn’t blueberry season, I opted for the frozen variety. You have to fold the blueberries into the biscuit dough as you’re doing your final folds or otherwise you’ll end up with a big purple mess. (edit from the future: I have made this many times with fresh blueberries and it works just fine, but you should cut your blueberries in half first if they’re really big)

I made a glaze with confectioners sugar and milk, and I applied mine when the biscuits were still pretty warm. My glaze wasn’t as thick as Bojangles, but the flavors were great and I was pretty excited with the results. If I wanted to be closer to what Bojangles often uses in their Bo-Berry biscuit promotional materials, I would put my glaze in a small ziplock bag and wait for both the glaze and the biscuit to be fairly cool and cut a tiny corner out of the ziplock bag and squirt the glaze into a diagonal shape on top of each biscuit.

All together this turned out to be a great sandwich. Super savory from the fried chicken and pimento cheese balanced out with a good amount of sweetness from the biscuit. I think if I did it again, I would probably leave off the glaze on any blueberry biscuit that I planned to eat in sandwich form because it got a little sticky and messy.

You can find the blueberry biscuit recipe below this photo of my finished Uva.

The Uva copycat. A blueberry biscuit with pimento cheese spread and a fried chicken thigh.

Make an Uva and become a much more exciting person!

Blueberry biscuits
Recipe
Blueberry biscuits
Blueberry biscuits view printable page for this recipe

This is an attempt at a copycat recipe for Bojangle's Bo-berry biscuit. If you like sweet and savory combinations in your food, you might enjoy this with a fried pork sausage patty or slice of ham.

Tags:

Ingredients:

  • 2.5 cups self-rising flour (300g)
  • 1 stick frozen butter
  • 1 cup cold buttermilk
  • 1⁄4 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup frozen thawed blueberries
  • 2 tbsp melted butter
Optional glaze
  • 1⁄4 cup milk
  • 2 cups confectioners sugar
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Grate frozen butter into the sifted self rising flour. Add sugar. Stir to combine until the butter is fully coated by flour. 
  2. Put bowl in freezer for 10 minutes 
  3. Combine buttermilk to bring together as a dough. Stir no more than 15 times. Overworking the dough at this stage could cause your finished biscuits to be more tough.  
  4. On a floured surface dump out dough and roll with a rolling pin. Dust with flour as needed when dough gets sticky. Fold the dough over on itself five different times creating layers. Each time you fold, add some blueberries. The point here is to get them incorporated into your dough without smashing them to bits. 
  5. Roll dough to 1/2 inch thick.
  6. Cut biscuits into circles or squares and place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. When cutting, you do not want to twist the cutter. Twisting while cutting will ruin the layers that you created with folding. 
  7. Placing your cut biscuits next to each other (touching) on the sheet pan will help them rise taller. 
  8. Bake at 475 degrees for around 15 minutes. Check around the 12 minute mark to make sure they do not brown too much. 
  9. When biscuits are done, transfer them off of your baking pan onto a cooling rack to stop the bottoms from cooking further. Paint the melted butter on top of each biscuit or you can prepare a glaze if you want them to be more like the bo-berry biscuits at Bojangles.  
  10. (OPTIONAL) To make the optional glaze, combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium low heat. Whisk until fully combined. Spoon over biscuits right before serving. 

Notes:

Because this biscuit recipe has sugar, you will probably see it brown faster than a normal biscuit recipe.