You'll love this easy, cheesy biscuit recipe. Raid your pantry for simple items like flour, baking powder, baking soda, and pickled jalapeños. Grate some sharp cheddar cheese and cold butter and dig out your biscuit cutter. The next time you make a chicken and biscuit casserole or a pot of chili, make these cheddar jalapeño biscuits on the side.
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Use my kitchen hacks for perfect biscuit butter and homemade buttermilk!
If you love a jalapeño cheddar combo like me, you'll love these savory, spicy buttermilk biscuits. Biscuits are easy to make as long as you follow a few "rules", guidelines or tricks.
The first trick, always use cold butter. My first kitchen hack helps you get the cold butter well incorporated into the flour with as little handling as possible.
First, get your cheese grater out. Yes, actually! I always grate my cold butter on top of the flour. This results in thin little slivers of cold butter, which makes it easy to toss them and cover them in flour which is one of the keys to fluffy biscuits.
A lot of biscuit recipes will have you use cubed cold butter and either a pastry tool or two knives to cut the butter into the flour. We can speed this up but grating the cold butter in instead. I think it makes mixing easier.
The butter will already be in small pieces this way and makes it easy to combine. These little pieces of butter will result in fluffy biscuits when the butter heats in the oven and creates thin little pockets, like a pastry. You can even pop the butter in the freezer for a few minutes before grating to get it colder.
The next trick for biscuits is to never twist your cookie or biscuit butter when making biscuits. Just press it straight down and bring up again. Twisting inhibits the rise of the biscuits in the oven.
Which leads me to the last trick of making biscuits and my second kitchen hack. Buttermilk (acidic) when combined with baking soda is what will help these biscuits rise in the hot oven.
BUT! You don't need to buy 2 liters of buttermilk and then wonder what you're going to do with the leftover 7 cups... We can make it! (My favorite saying of all time.)
To make homemade buttermilk add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to a one-cup measuring cup. Fill the cup the rest of the way with milk. Wait 10 minutes and you'll have a not very pretty curdled buttermilk substitute! Don't you love that? I do.
Ingredients you need
Like in the photo above, you'll need some basic baking items - all purpose flour, baking soda, and baking powder, salt, and pepper. You'll also need some fridge items.
Ingredient Substitutions
- Jalapeño: If you just want cheddar biscuits instead of jalapeño cheddar biscuits, just leave out the jalapeños. You could add in some olives.
- Cheese: If you don't like sharp or old cheese, try a mild cheese or a marble.
Let's make these biscuits
Make sure your butter is cold. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. I use this silicone baking mat by Silpat.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the butter, and coat it in the flour. Do the same with the chopped jalapeños and the cheese.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in most of the buttermilk. Mix the dough together. It should come together in a shaggy dough. Don't overmix it, just bring it together. If it's too dry to come together, then add in some more buttermilk as needed. I usually need almost all of it, but it depends on how you measure your flour, etc. (I always use my kitchen scale and weigh flour, it's the most accurate measurement).
Once your dough it together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. You don't need a rolling pin. Just use your hands to press the dough out to about an inch thick or an inch and a half thick. This helps to not overwork the dough and also gives a craggy, messy top to the dough. All those little bits will crisp up in the oven. If you don't want that, smooth out the top of the dough.
Once the dough is flattened, cut out the biscuits. Remember to press straight down and lift up instead of twisting and turning the cutter. Place each biscuit on the prepared baking sheet. (I forgot this time, yikes)
Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.
Enjoy these warm and topped with butter, on the side of a bowl of chili, as a topping for chicken and biscuits casserole, or at room temperature with a swipe of cream cheese.
Tips and Tricks
- Use cold butter! And grate the butter in.
- Don't twist your cookie cutter or biscuit cutter! Press straight down and pull up.
Recipes FAQs
Coat small pieces of butter in flour, similar to a pastry. The heat melts the butter and releases steam that's trapped in layers of flour, creating a fluffy, layered biscuit. You can see the layers in a properly mixed and baked biscuit.
The acidity in buttermilk (in the case of DIY buttermilk - the vinegar) reacts with the baking soda to create a rise in the biscuit. Baking powder reacts to the heat in the oven to create a rise in biscuit recipes.
Cheddar Jalapeno Biscuits
Equipment
- Baking Sheet
Ingredients
- 360 grams flour (about 3 cups)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 70 grams butter (5 tablespoons)
- 250 ml buttermilk (1 cup)
- 4 oz cheddar cheese (grated, about 1 cup)
- ¼ cup pickled jalapeno slices (chopped)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. (I use a silicone mat)
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and black pepper.
- Grate in the cold butter. Cover butter in the flour mix, making a crumbled mixture.
- Add the cheese and jalapeno and mix to cover them in flour.
- Make a well in the center and pour in most of the buttermilk. You may not need it all. Mix together to end up with a shaggy dough. Don't over mix, just bring together with your hands until just together. If the dough is too dry and doesn't stick together, add more buttermilk as needed.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Press the dough out flat until it's 1 ½ inches thick. Use a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to cut out circles. I used a " sized cutter and cut 11 biscuits. When cutting out the circle press straight up and dough with your cutter and do not twist the cutter – this prevents the biscuits from rising fully in the oven.
- Alternatively, you can use a knife and cut the dough into squares.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.
Notes
- Always use cold butter for biscuits. Don't overwork the dough. Don't twist the biscuit cutter. Check the blog post for homemade buttermilk.
- When measuring flour, I go by 120 grams per cup. If you’d like to use cup measurement for the flour, then measure by scooping your flour into the measuring cup, and not digging your cup into the flour. You’ll get the best results by using a scale though.
Nutrition
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you.
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I absolutely loved these biscuits. I tried it out and am absolutely floored. It has great flavors especially the spice. Thank you for sharing this.
I'm glad you enjoyed them, thanks so much for commenting!
Jacqueline