Sour Cream Biscuits - recipe by Cooks and Kid (2024)
Before I can share with you this recipe for Sour Cream Biscuits, there is a little bit of history to share. Pillsbury was a favorite growing up, then it became all about Popeye’s. Real fancy, right? To me baking biscuits has always been elusive, not something you make at home. A baked good only to be enjoyed out. A few years ago, I had the most amazing biscuit at Empire State South, here in Atlanta. It was tender and light and encased in a crumbly outer shell. Their biscuit totally messed me up because I could never again settle for a mediocre store bought or fast food biscuit. We would go back to ESS’s brunch multiple times, just so I could have that biscuit again. Then we stopped eating out…
So I started the quest for the perfect biscuit at home. I found an amazing recipe that is fool proof and learned some secrets that helped curate a top notch biscuit. Now, I am sure you are wondering the role sour cream plays in all this. Good question. I love a buttermilk biscuit just as much as the next person, but honestly sometimes I just don’t have buttermilk on hand. I usually have to buy a quart for one cup, and then I freeze the rest. Well, there are also times when we wake up, and we just don’t even have astash in the freezer, but we still want biscuits. In our house, we always have sour cream on hand, it’s a staple, like ketchup. Using sour cream instead of buttermilk results in the same fluffy biscuit and the same slight tang buttermilk has. Also, no need to fear baking biscuits from scratch. It is so simple and literally takes like 15 minutes of prep time. Crazy, right? Before baking them myself I thought it was an all day affair.
Now some secrets to a better biscuit:
Never use a rolling pin. It flattens and compresses the dough which will result in a hockey puck not a sky high tender biscuit. Use your hands to flatten it out and to fold it over a couple of times.
Invest in a pastry cutter.There is no need to dirty a food processor. If you have a pastry cutter and some elbow grease you can cut the butter into the flour in like 3 minutes.
Sugar or no sugar, your choice. If you want a savory biscuit for sandwiches or to pair with ham etc. you will want to skip the sugar. If you are pairing with jam and butter, I like to add a little bit of sweetness. The amount in the recipe is not overpowering so don’t worry about it being too sweet.
Good unsalted butter. You want to use the best quality butter within your budget. It may seem like a small thing, but good butter equals good flavor.
Cold butter. To start, I actually will cut the butter into cubes and place in the freezer while I prep the rest of the ingredients. I only recommend this if it will only be in there no more than 10 minutes. Any longer just stick it in the fridge.
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the board
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp baking powder (use one without aluminum)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
6 tbsp cubed unsalted butter, very cold
1/2 cup sour cream (full fat)
1/4 cup whole milk, plus 2 tbsp
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 450°.
Combine the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the cubed butter and using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until it resembles a coarse meal. Alternatively this can be done in a food processor. Pulse the butter with the dry ingredients until it resembles a coarse meal.
Add the sour cream and milk and mix until just combined and the mixture is slightly wet and sticky.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Lightly dust flour on top of the dough and lightly pat using your hands to form a rectangle. Fold the dough in half and pat down again. Dusting with more flour as needed. Repeat folding 3 additional times and finally pat to a about 1.5" thick rectangle. Using a 2 1/2" cutter cut out 8 biscuits. You may only get 4-5 from the first pass, pat out the scraps until you get 8 biscuits.
Place the biscuits in a circular shape touching each other in greased baking dish (preferably a cast iron pan).
Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.
Notes
If you have leftover biscuits and you want to refresh them. Slice them in half, slather them with butter and heat them in a skillet (butter side down) over medium heat until golden brown.
Place 1 cup heavy cream and 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice or distilled white vinegar in a clean 1 pint glass jar and stir with a clean spoon until combined. Cover with a paper towel or cheesecloth and secure with a rubber band.
Overworking the dough will not only create a tough biscuit instead of a tender biscuit, but can also result in a flatter biscuit. The more you play with the dough, the warmer the dough becomes. If the fat becomes too warm it will melt into the flour and they won't rise as tall.
Buttermilk can work great as a substitute, but it's a little trickier since it's so much thinner than sour cream. In baking, we'd recommend only using 3/4 cup of buttermilk for every cup of sour cream called for. The batter may look a little thinner, but it should still bake up nicely.
For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.
When the biscuits go in the oven, the butter will melt and cause steam. This buttery steam, in turn, helps produce flaky layers and a higher lift to the biscuits.
The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.
Even though you're super-careful not to overmix your dough, you're still going to develop its gluten somewhat; that's just the nature of mixing flour with liquid. 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.
Cake flour, a low-protein flour that is available in supermarkets from Boston to Chicago, north to Seattle and down to Los Angeles, makes a fine biscuit. Standard Northern all-purpose flour does as well, especially if you allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes or so before cutting it out and baking.
Turns out when you put supremely cold or frozen dough in the oven, “it causes the water in the butter to evaporate more quickly,” said Fields. “When water evaporates it goes up, as steam, so it takes all the structure [of the biscuit] with it.”
Yes, you can substitute sour cream! Thin it with milk or water to get the right consistency. For each cup of buttermilk needed, use 3/4 cup sour cream and 1/4 cup liquid. Editor's Tip: Sour cream has a higher fat content, so this will result in richer-tasting foods.
To replace 1 cup (240 mL) of buttermilk in a recipe, combine 3/4 cup (172 grams) of sour cream with 1/4 cup (60 mL) of water or milk, and whisk the mixture until smooth.
You can use buttermilk instead of sour cream in a baked recipe, but the buttermilk is more liquid. So you'll need to add butter to get the same body. To replace 1 cup sour cream, beat in -3/4 cup buttermilk and 1/3 cup butter. Replacing half-and-half with buttermilk is a little trickier.
Whisk together one cup of cream and one teaspoon of distilled white vinegar or lemon juice in a clean mason jar. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then add ¼ cup of whole milk. Stir well to combine. Cover the jar with a lid or cheesecloth secured with a rubber band, and let it sit at room temperature for 24-48 hours.
Mix one cup of whole milk and a tablespoon juice of lemon to make sour cream replacement. Evaporated milk can be substituted for milk if you don't have any milk. Mix 2/3 cup powder milk with 3/4 cup water and a teaspoon of lemon juice/vinegar to make sour cream.
Introduction: My name is Eusebia Nader, I am a encouraging, brainy, lively, nice, famous, healthy, clever person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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