Because sometimes that gorgeous, golden, translucent liquid awesomeness of bacon fat is just too amazing to go to waste and if you can’t cook with all of it, why not make some good old-fashioned biscuits from it? These bacon fat biscuits are a good way to use up some leftover grease and make a tasty side for dinner.
An Old-Fashioned Favorite
I wanted to make and post this recipe because I feel it’s such a simple bake and one that people have been making for years. It makes me think of Little House on the Prairie, Girl Scout outings, camping, and being in a cabin in the woods. It makes me think of all the ways everyone used to do things in society and at home to reuse and make use of everything. It also makes me think of yummy comfort food at home as a kid.
I grew up eating biscuits pretty much every week. My mother would either make drop biscuits or cut biscuits, but regardless, we had biscuits with most of our dinners. It’s an easy and fast way to get a bread like accompaniment on the table or create a tasty base for a whole meal (can you say cream tuna and peas over biscuits?? And if you think that’s gross, then we should revisit this topic later). We also did things and still do things like save bacon fat for cooking and such later (or easier disposal of if we ended up with too much). This is something I still try to do, especially when I have a lot of it. Though, I don’t remember my mom combining the bacon fat and biscuit recipe together, it seemed like a situation that needed to be explored. Hope you enjoy.
How to Make Bacon Fat Biscuits
Makes 8-10 biscuits
Ingredients
- ½ cup chilled bacon fat – (it needs to be a solid hunk of fat)
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsps baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ cup milk
- 1 tablespoon sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425°F with the rack in the center of the oven. Prep a baking sheet by lining with parchment paper.
- Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar together in a bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork.
- Next, either using the fork, a pastry cutter, or (my preference) your clean hands, cut the chilled bacon fat into the dry ingredients until a nice small crumb texture has formed.
- Create a small well or hole in the middle of the flour mixture and pour the milk into it.
- Using your hands, fork, or a pastry cutter, fold the milk into the flour mixture until the dough just comes together and everything is evenly moist.
- Gently knead a couple of times more before patting the dough into a flat roundish shape about ½” thick.
- Using a 2” round pastry cutter or glass or cookie cutter (whatever you got that is clean and round like that will generally work), cut out as many complete biscuits as you can from the dough. You can then take the scraps and gently knead then pat them back together to make another ½” thick round and cut out additional biscuits.
- Place the cut biscuits on the prepared baking sheet and transfer to the preheated oven.
- Bake the biscuits for 12-14 minutes or until they have risen and are golden brown.
Serve warm, preferably with a little butter or apricot jam if you dare.
