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Cheesy Garlic Biscuits

(Yes, Those Biscuits)

Let's be honest: you've been to Red Lobster exactly once in the past five years, and it wasn't for the seafood. It was for the biscuits. Those golden, garlicky, cheese-laden lumps of carbohydrate joy that appear on your table before you've even ordered. You ate four of them. You considered asking for more. You briefly thought about skipping the entrée entirely and just ordering a basket of biscuits like some kind of feral bread gremlin. The shrimp was fine. The biscuits were transcendent.

Well, here's the thing: you can make those biscuits at home. And you don't have to deal with the sub-par seafood, the endless wait for a table on a Saturday night, or the existential crisis of watching a family of six take photos with a lobster tank. Just the biscuits. As many as you want. Whenever you want.

Now, does this recipe use Bisquick? Yes. Yes it does. I can hear the from-scratch purists sharpening their rolling pins already. "You could just make your own biscuit mix with flour and baking powder and—" Yes. I could. I could also churn my own butter and mill my own wheat. But it's a Tuesday, I want cheese biscuits, and Bisquick is $4 at the grocery store. Sometimes convenience wins. If using a baking mix offends your sensibilities, feel free to close this tab and go knead something. For the rest of us: let's make some biscuits.

Prep: 15 min Cook: 17 min Makes: 12 biscuits (theoretically for sharing) Difficulty: Box mix easy, which is the point
Golden cheesy garlic biscuits glistening with garlic butter on a baking sheet
Bisquick and audacity. That's all it takes.

Ingredients

The Biscuits

The Garlic Butter Situation

This is what takes them from "good biscuits" to "I need to sit down for a minute" biscuits.

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Not 350. Not 375. 400. These biscuits need high heat to puff up properly. Don't negotiate with the oven.
  2. Cut the butter into the Bisquick. Put the Bisquick in a medium bowl. Add the cold, cubed butter. Use a pastry cutter, two forks, or your fingers to work the butter into the mix until you have pea-sized chunks of butter throughout. This is important—those little butter pieces create steam pockets when they bake, which is what makes the biscuits light and fluffy instead of dense and sad. Don't over-mix. Don't let the butter get warm. Pea-sized chunks. That's the goal.
  3. Add the cheese, milk, and garlic. Toss in the shredded cheddar, pour in the milk, and add the garlic powder. Now here's the critical part: mix this by hand. Not with a mixer. Not with a food processor. Your actual human hands. Why? Two reasons. First, you don't want to over-mix—biscuit dough that's been beaten into submission becomes tough and chewy. Second, and more practically, this dough will gum up a mixer so fast you'll spend more time cleaning the beaters than you spent making the biscuits. Use your hands. Mix until it just comes together. Lumpy is fine. Shaggy is fine. Wet spots are not fine—if it looks too dry, add a splash more milk. But stop mixing the second it holds together.
  4. Portion onto a baking sheet. Using an ice cream scoop or a ¼-cup measuring cup, drop portions of dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Don't flatten them. Don't shape them into perfect circles. They should look like lumpy mounds of cheese-studded potential. Leave a couple inches between them so they can spread.
  5. Bake for 16-17 minutes. You're looking for the tops to turn light golden brown. Every oven is different, so start checking at 15 minutes. The bottoms should be golden too. If they're browning too fast on the bottom, your oven runs hot. Move the rack up next time.
  6. Make the garlic butter while they bake. Melt the half stick of butter in the microwave or a small saucepan. Stir in the garlic powder and parsley flakes. That's it. This isn't complicated. It's just butter with stuff in it.
  7. Brush immediately. The second the biscuits come out of the oven, brush that garlic butter all over the tops. Be generous. Use all of it. Every biscuit should be glistening with garlic butter like it just came back from a spa. The warm biscuits will absorb some of the butter, which is exactly what you want.
  8. Serve hot and accept worship. These are best eaten within about 10 minutes of coming out of the oven. They're still good later, but that fresh-from-the-oven moment is peak biscuit. Serve them with dinner. Serve them AS dinner. I'm not here to judge your life choices.

Notes

  • On the Bisquick: Look, I know. Using Bisquick feels like cheating. It IS cheating. That's the whole point. It's a shortcut that works. Bisquick is literally just flour, leavening, and fat—the same things you'd put in homemade biscuit dough, except someone already mixed them for you and put them in a box. You're not lesser for using it. You're efficient. There's a difference.
  • On the butter quantity: You may have noticed there's a lot of butter in this recipe. A whole stick in the dough, half a stick in the topping. That's 1.5 sticks of butter for 12 biscuits. This is not a health food. This is a sometimes food. But when that sometimes comes, it should be worth it.
  • Cold ingredients matter: Cold butter and cold milk are essential. Warm ingredients = melted butter = flat, dense biscuits. If your kitchen is warm, pop the cubed butter in the freezer for 10 minutes before starting. Science is on your side here.
  • Do not use a mixer: I cannot stress this enough. The dough is sticky and thick and will coat your mixer's beaters in a cement-like paste that requires archaeological tools to remove. Use your hands. It takes 30 seconds. Your dishwasher will thank you.

Stuff You'll Need

A medium bowl. A pastry cutter, two forks, or your fingers for cutting in the butter. An ice cream scoop or ¼-cup measure. A baking sheet (ungreased). A small bowl for the garlic butter. A pastry brush for slathering. The willingness to use Bisquick and not tell anyone.