Food - Drink
The Secret Ingredient That Will Change Your Homemade Biscuits Forever
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
A lighter, fluffier texture is what biscuit-bakers seek, relying on various techniques — such as super-cold fat and tenderizing buttermilk — to achieve it. While we typically think of biscuits as a mix of flour, salt, butter, buttermilk, and occasionally sugar, it turns out that there's a much simpler recipe that can produce light, tender biscuits with just three ingredients.
As it turns out, mayonnaise, often called for in baking recipes and said to bring tenderness to items such as pancakes, is a handy ingredient for using in biscuits as well. The vinegar included in mayo acts as a tenderizing agent to create a wonderful texture in the biscuits, and a simple recipe calling for self-rising flour, milk, and mayonnaise turns out light and fluffy biscuits.
Note that rather than being rolled and cut, mayonnaise biscuits are drop biscuits, using just enough milk to hold them together before being dropped onto a baking sheet or into a muffin pan. So the next time you're craving biscuits, just reach for a bag of flour, a jar of mayo, and some milk, and tender biscuits can be yours in less than 15 minutes.