Southern Style Cheddar and Buttermilk Skillet Biscuits (a.k.a. Cheddar Time Biscuits)

After we moved away from our beloved Tudor's Biscuit World, I wanted to learn how to make my own southern style buttermilk biscuits. So somehow I found this awesome recipe where you cooked them in a cast iron skillet. It worked great. Then I wanted to make them again. But I couldn't find the recipe anywhere! So after a lot of trial and error, I kind of pulled directions and ingredient amounts from three different recipes to finally find a version that worked for me. After a few months, I experimented with adding grated cheddar and dried thyme leaves. I got it down pretty good, and I put the recipe on my phone.

Then I broke my phone. And there was no way to get the recipe off of that. So today, once again, I wrote down as much as I could remember, sought a few different biscuit recipes for general guidance, and then did some experimenting in the kitchen until my dough looked right (even trying to pull the best ideas from other recipes, I couldn't seem to get it right without adjusting it myself). And here is that recipe. It seemed to turn out great. But I might come back here and tweak it again if I find out something isn't quite right.

PS: I call these "Cheddar Time Biscuits." Because there is cheddar and thyme. You can easily leave out either or both of these ingredients if you just want normal buttermilk biscuits.

Ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter
• 3 1/4 c self rising flour
• 3/4 c sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• 1/2 Tbsp dried thyme
• 1 1/4 c buttermilk*

Preheat oven AND oiled cast iron skillet to 475.

Cut 5 Tbsp from your stick of butter, and cube it. Put it in the freezer to chill (you'll want it to be in there around ten minutes, probably, but you can do other stuff during this time. *If you don't have buttermilk, you can add 1 Tbsp of either vinegar or lemon juice to your milk--personally, I add 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice + 1/2 Tbsp vinegar. If needed, do this now, as well. You'll need this to be mixed and sitting for about ten minutes, too).

The other 3 Tbsp of butter you'll need to have melted eventually, so I usually just put this in a little glass jar or bowl or something, melt it in the microwave, and just leave it there until I need it.

Put your flour in a bowl. When your butter is pretty cold and hard, cut that into the flour. You're looking for roughly pea-sized clumps of butter evenly distributed throughout the flour. Add the cheese and thyme, and make sure it's distributed well.

Add your buttermilk to the flour. Sometimes I start mixing with a wooden spoon, but in the end I usually find it works better just mushing it with my own hands. It's messy, but I haven't figured out a great solution to this yet. Maybe I should get some gloves or something. Get it kind of into a ball, or a lumpish shape, anyway.

Lightly flour a working surface, then dump your lump of dough onto that. You'll want to roll or flop it around until it's also lightly covered with flour on the outside. Flatten the lump out with your hands until it's a flat circle about somewhere between 1 and 3 inches thick. Take a circular cutter and cut out all the biscuits you can. I usually cut mine with a cup that's I think about the same size of a red Solo cup at its mouth. You should end up with somewhere between 6 and 10 biscuits, depending on how big you cut them.

Using a potholder (because it's going to be very hot!), remove the cast iron skillet from the oven. Add your biscuit shapes until you can't really fit anymore. If you look in my picture, I fit 8 biscuits into my 10" skillet, but I had to use a fork to kind of squish some to make more room. I had two left over, which I just threw on a baking sheet on another oven rack.

Use one of those food brush doohickeys and cover the tops of your biscuits with the melted butter. Try to spread it as even as possible, or you'll have some biscuits that have pools of butter on top and some that are dry.

Bake them for around 15 minutes. The buttered tops should turn crispy and golden brown. Remove from the oven; let cool. I always try to skip that step and end up burning my tongue. Just hold yourself back as long as possible.