Craving Hearty Biscuits Without the Trans Fat? Try This Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What fat is best for biscuits? ›

Choosing the fat for your biscuits

Let's start with the base of any good biscuit — the fat. Our original recipe calls for 4 to 6 tablespoons of butter or shortening. The higher amount will give you a richer, more buttery crumb. I decide to split the difference for testing purposes and use 5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces).

If your biscuits are too tough…

Biscuit dough is moist and sticky, so much so that it may seem too wet after you've added all your flour. If you do think this about your dough, fight the urge to add more dry ingredients — dough that isn't wet enough will bake into a hard, dry biscuit.

The biscuits will be hard and tough if you stir the dough too much. They will have a floury, uneven texture if you don't mix enough. Our Test Kitchen cracked the code: Stir the dough 15 times for the perfect consistency and texture.

A good old-fashioned rich tea is a healthier choice as they're low in sugar and saturated fat. This is because, unlike most biscuits, they are made with vegetable oils rather than butter. Nairn's biscuits are low in saturated fat and sugar, and are a source of fibre thanks to the oat base.

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

"Pinch the flour and fat together like you're snapping your fingers," he explains. This creates thin sheets of butter that create puff pastry-like layers in your biscuits. For soft and fluffy biscuits, blend the liquid and dry ingredients just until the dough "resembles cottage cheese," Sonoskus says.

Biscuit Tip 1: Use cold ingredients

Those lumps get coated in flour and melt during baking into layers. If your fats are too warm, the lumps will melt and form a hom*ogeneous dough, resulting in dense, leaden biscuits. It can be difficult to prep your butter without warming it with your fingers.

What is the best flour for making biscuits? ›

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

If you use too much flour then you will end up with dense biscuits. So you want to be sure to measure your flour correctly. If you are using a dry measuring cup, then first fluff up your flour with a fork.

in this case, it appears that the biscuit structure is just a lot more stable (structurally speaking) when there's less butter. When you get a lot of butter, you're kind of filling your biscuit with holes, which makes it unable to bear its own weight to rise very far.

Choosing between shortening and lard comes down to personal preference. Both create a flaky, tender crust, are semi-solid, and are 100% fat. Swap one for the other in recipes. If you want to add additional flavor to the dish, lard is the right choice.

So what's the final verdict? Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt-in-your mouth texture. I'd be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both.

Lard has a higher melting point than butter, which means that you'll likely end up with lighter, flakier biscuits (or cookies that spread less - not sure what kind of biscuits you mean). However, the upside with butter will always be flavor. Your biscuits won't taste like butter if you don't make them with butter.

The truth is, while lard can by absolutely no means be called “healthy,” it has less cholesterol and saturated fat than butter, and unlike most vegetable shortening, it does not contain trans fats. In moderation, and in combination with regular butter, it truly does make the tastiest pie crusts and biscuits.