Drop Biscuits with Fried Basil and Maple Bacon

Folks, biscuits of any type - provided they are correctly baked and not over-mixed - are superior to all other breakfasts. My grandmother makes raised yeasty biscuits and serves them with utterly delicious and savory sausage gravy. Buttermilk biscuits à la my chicken pot pie topping are excellent served plain and hot, with lots of apple butter and jam. Sweet or savory, for breakfast or for supper, really good buttermilk biscuits are an essential staple of every gourmand.

I feel very strongly about biscuits. The vast majority of restaurants gets biscuits plain wrong. And biscuits in "other" (non-Southern) cookbooks are too buttery, salty, greasy, or cakey. The best, absolute best breakfast biscuit I have ever had made outside of the kitchens of cooks I trust was at a sweet little brunch locale in Savannah, a place called B. Matthew's Eatery. (Get the Eggs Benedict or the B. Matthew's Basic Breakfast. Holy smokes.) This biscuit was everything that I love about biscuits: light, fluffy, hot, with a sprinkle of dusted flour leftover from homemade batter that didn't quite get baked through. No superfluous butter. No greasy layers. Grandmother's raised biscuits are like this, as are Bill Neal's buttermilk biscuits that I make with that chicken pot pie.

There is one biscuit in the world that breaks my biscuit rules. And it is from a non-Southern cookbook. I know it must be sacrilege, but if you treat these biscuits right, with good flour (I like King Arthur), good butter (no store brands, as they contain more water and ergo less good butter), and lean buttermilk (cream makes these into scones, not biscuits), then they are just as tasty as my Southern favorites. With that, I share with you the Cook's Illustrated drop biscuit.

Chicken Pot Pie with Buttermilk Biscuits

It's a dreary, rainy day here in the North Carolina Piedmont. The Christmas decorations are down and things are finally back to normal. It's back to the grind of paper edits, meetings, countless drives between Chapel Hill and Durham, rehearsal schedules, and lesson planning. I usually take a strange sort of comfort in the return to a normal schedule and balanced lifestyle. Still, I try to plan healthier versions of the warm, hearty meals that we enjoyed over the holidays. The winter here has been temperamental, with hints and peeks of warm spring days interspersed with cold ones like this. So I find that the best way to counter the ups and downs of holidays and normalcy, unseasonable warmth and winter cold, is with hearty, healthy food. Obviously.


To be completely honest, I never really liked chicken pot pie. I hope nothing is wrong with me. I'm sure that my childlike tastes were averse to something in it - maybe the starchy beans or creamy chicken, maybe the flaky pie top. Each individual ingredient - chicken, vegetables, cream, crust - is stunningly delicious. I never figured out why I didn't wholeheartedly enjoy them all together. Enter flaky buttermilk biscuits. Greek yogurt instead of cream. Cauliflower florets and zucchini chunks instead of starchy beans. Balanced.