Food

I made biscuits for the first time in a long while about a week ago. I'll have to confess my reason for doing so. I love biscuits and and gravy for breakfast. I fry an egg and (over easy) and plop it down on my biscuits and gravy and my mouth and tummy is happy. So here's the confession part. I hate making gravy. I'm just not good at it. It's too tricky to make satisfying gravy. So when Whole Foods had it in the refrigerator section -- which they only do right around Thanksgiving, I've got to have "home made" biscuits and gravy.

Now last time I did this I was SUPER lazy. It's embarrassing! I bought what can only be called "biscuits in a can". You know the ones, they're shaped like the can and when you open the can it makes a popping sound. You take them right out of the can and stick 'em in the oven. That's not home made.

But worse, they were way, way too sweet. There was sugar added (in the can), and biscuits should never taste like birthday cake! So about a week ago I made real, home made drop biscuits. And they turned out fine. At least for this non-Southerner they did. But if you read what this guy (below) has to say, I must not know what I'm talking about.

Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/better-biscuits-south-thanksgiving/576526/
 
I've never noticed thise canned biscuits to be sweet, but they have the wrong texture. Too flaky. I usually use Jiffy biscuit mix.
 
I've never noticed thise canned biscuits to be sweet, but they have the wrong texture. Too flaky. I usually use Jiffy biscuit mix.

I do most of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods, mostly 'cause I'm living car free these days and I can easily walk to the place from where I live. It used to be that Whole Foods had really good selection (variety) here. Not so much any more. The were always shifting stuff around, and in the process their beer and wine section more than quadrupled in size, which shrunk down the rest of the store space availability, so their variety / selection took a big hit. But it almost seems like they've had a conspiracy to ruin what made it a good store, once, by shrinking down selection / variety of choices.

Anyway, my local Whole Foods doesn't have "flaky" buscuits in a can. It has crappy biscuits in a can. The load them down with sugar (which, more and more, is what is packed into packaged food products). I don't think I'll try another brand, though, even if I found one somewhere. I bet they're all crappy. And, besides, making biscuits from scratch is easy. Drop biscuits only have three ingredients, after all, in the recipe I used: all purpose flour, butter, milk. (Note that it doesn't call for sugar.)
 
I love biscuits. I always use Bisquick or Jiffy. It's not sweet. I did buy a store brand baking mix once that was sweet, so I know what you mean about biscuits being sweet being wrong. They were more like a shortbread that would be good for dessert with strawberries and cream.

I don't know how you make biscuits from scratch with only flour and butter and milk. Don't they need a leavening ingredient to puff up? Baking powder or buttermilk are traditional.

I'm not much into breakfast gravy. A country style sausage gravy over biscuits with fried eggs, is something I might eat a couple times a year in a diner breakfast when I'm on vacation with Pixi back in Upstate NY where she's from. (A turkey gravy, however, goes on mashed potatoes!)

Despite liking a non-sweet biscuit, I'll slather them with raw local honey or a good jam. I'll eat a couple plain with butter and my eggs, and then a couple more with the sweet stuff, as a sort of dessert with more coffee.
 
The flour/butter/milk version probably uses self-rising flour, not all-purpose...
 
I've just googled to check what an American biscuit is. It looks like what I thought it was - what we'd call a scone [skon]. What I'm not understanding is having them as the carb portion of breakfast or dinner lol

We eat scones as a stand alone morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea food only. If they are plain we might have jam and cream with them and a cup of tea (altogether called a Devonshire Tea). Often people bake in dates, or cheese. A full savory scone might have cheese, bacon, onion, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, and on devastating occasions, corn. At home I make scones that seem more like your Red Lobster biscuits (we don't have that chain) - a bit wetter and not rolled or shaped, just cooked in spoonfuls. I'm not sure why you'd buy a can of mix when the only dry ingredients are flour, salt and baking powder. Well, and since I make cheese scones I tend to add a sprinkle of paprika (unsmoked). I also usually make a 50/50 mix of white to wholemeal flour as it makes them a little fluffier.
 
Scones are a little different.

I use a mix I can add water to because I don't drink milk...lol

Oh, and please don't compare Red Lobster to real food :eek:
 
I've just googled to check what an American biscuit is. It looks like what I thought it was - what we'd call a scone [skon]. What I'm not understanding is having them as the carb portion of breakfast or dinner lol

We eat scones as a stand alone morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea food only. If they are plain we might have jam and cream with them and a cup of tea (altogether called a Devonshire Tea). Often people bake in dates, or cheese. A full savory scone might have cheese, bacon, onion, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, and on devastating occasions, corn. At home I make scones that seem more like your Red Lobster biscuits (we don't have that chain) - a bit wetter and not rolled or shaped, just cooked in spoonfuls. I'm not sure why you'd buy a can of mix when the only dry ingredients are flour, salt and baking powder. Well, and since I make cheese scones I tend to add a sprinkle of paprika (unsmoked). I also usually make a 50/50 mix of white to wholemeal flour as it makes them a little fluffier.

Up here in New England we have every kind of food... I'm quite familiar with scones. They are usually a sort of triangular precise shape. You can get them with raisins, cranberries. Having one with all the fixings including cheese and bacons sounds great!

Scones are a little different.

I use a mix I can add water to because I don't drink milk...lol

Oh, and please don't compare Red Lobster to real food :eek:

Haha all the Red Lobsters in Massachusetts closed a few years ago because no one was going. We have real seafood here on the Atlantic Coast!

We do have KFCs that serve gummy southern style biscuits by the truckload though. KFC is good when I'm depressed and lazy and just say fuck it. Once a year or so. I do love the chicken, I admit. My first real job as a teenager was at a KFC and I was in heaven!
 
I think we still have one Red Lobster in my area. I don't know why anyone would eat there when we have so much fresh seafood. Nothing beats catching your own blue crabs and sauteing them in garlic and butter.

The KFC closed down for many years in my area. They recently built a new one and I tried it out. Not good. Oh well, chicken is cheap. I'll make my own.
 
As fast food chicken biscuits go, Bojangles has much better biscuits (they’re not flaky but tender) than KFC. Not sure how far that gets out of the South though.
 
Some years ago Tam and I stopped at a small town diner in Utah. "Oh cool!" I said on reading the menu, "They have scones out here. I will have tea and scones." What arrived was some kind of large deep fried pastry. Weird.

Leetah
 
Some years ago Tam and I stopped at a small town diner in Utah. "Oh cool!" I said on reading the menu, "They have scones out here. I will have tea and scones." What arrived was some kind of large deep fried pastry. Weird.

Leetah
Sometimes things get lost in translation lol
 
For breakfast, I always have a few eggs and coffee. Sometimes I can indulge myself with dessert, but this happens very rarely.
 
Twofer

So, two part post, a response and a recipe...

Is it racist to invoke fry bread? How about hamburgers? I'm mostly Caucasian -- enough to pass as a white guy (with some Indian of the feather and fry bread variety stirred in). So I suppose I should get upset if someone calls us hamburger eater?

No, it is not racist to invoke fry bread, and Native Americans are not the only ones to fry dough, I can name a handful of European cultures that do so, nor does Fry Bread refer to a specific dish, as every culture has a different recipe. And hamburger is, at least according to some foodie apocrypha, a New Yorker butchering of Hamburg-style beefsteak sandwich, which got shortened to Hamburger beefsteak sandwich, then to Hamburger sandwich, and then just hamburger.

On to the recipe...

English Style Leg of Lamb and Mint Sauce(Never Mint Jelly)

1 Leg of Australian/Tasmanian/New Zealand Lamb(trussed up like a rope bunny if bone out)
Coarse Sea Salt
Fresh Cracked Pepper

Liberally coat the haunch with the salt and pepper, roast at 350 for 30 minutes per pound or desired internal temperature is reached. Let rest 5-10 minutes.

While the Lamb is resting combine in small pot

6-10 chopped mint leaves
1 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
Sugar to Taste

Heat until warm

This relatively simple recipe is a traditional English dish, the salt and pepper don't overpower the flavor of the lamb, the vinegar cuts the fattiness of the lamb, the sugar cuts the tartness of the vinegar, and the mint accents the lamb. Serve with scalloped potatoes, a simple salad, and a white, blush, or rose wine.
 
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