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These biscuits are tender, buttery, flaky and come together so quickly. You’ll have fresh buttermilk biscuits from scratch in no time!

homemade buttery buttermilk biscuits from scratch in a cast iron skillet

What Makes a Yummy Buttermilk Biscuit?

The yummiest biscuits are packed full of buttery flavor. They are soft and tender with a golden, slightly crispy exterior. These buttermilk biscuits check all of those boxes. I hope you love them!

Tips and Tricks

Avoid Overworking

Biscuits use cold butter in the dough. When it heats up during the baking process, it creates steam, which help create a lighter and flakier biscuit. Overworking the dough causes the butter to warm up, preventing this process from happening effectively. Overworking can also cause more gluten to develop, leading to a tougher biscuit. For best results, work the dough just until it’s combined and avoid over-handling.

This recipe has an optional step of folding and rotating the dough repeatedly to create a more layered/flaky biscuit. This step is recommended, but not necessary. If you don’t mind having a less flaky buscuit, you can go ahead and skip this step.

Grate the Butter

Biscuits require that cold butter be cut into the flour mixture. Traditionally, this is done with a pastry cutter or two forks. I tend to prefer grating the cold butter directly into the flour mixture. This method can also be quicker, which prevents the butter from warming up too much.

Cutting the Biscuits

Biscuits are traditionally cut into rounds using a biscuit cutter or cookie cutter. This often requires the excess dough to be reworked before it can be cut again. To avoid this, you can cut the slab of dough into squares or wedges, leaving no excess dough and saving a bit of time. They’ll still bake up beautifully, they just won’t have the classic round shape.

Brushing with Butter

It’s not a necessary step, but you can choose to brush melted butter onto the bisuits before and/or after baking. Brushing butter on the biscuits before baking will create an extra golden and shiny crust. Brushing butter on the buscuits as soon as they come out of the oven will enhance shine and add some extra butter flavor. Both will create a slightly softer crust.

buttermilk biscuits made from scratch in a cast iron skillet with one broken open on a plate to show the tender inside

Serving Ideas and Flavor Variations

Serving Ideas – Biscuits are absolutely delicious plain. They’re also great served with butter, jam, or honey. Biscuits can be served alongside eggs, bacon, or sausage as part of a delicious breakfast and can even be used to make the yummiest breakfast sandwiches. They can also be topped with homemade sausage gravy, a personal favorite! They are fantastic alongside fried chicken or used for a chicken sandwich. They’re great on top of a pot pie or alongside a comforting stew. You can even top with stewed apples or peaches and vanilla ice cream for a delicious sweet treat. Let me know in the comment section at the bottom of this page how you enjoy biscuits, I’d love to hear it!

Flavor Variations – This recipe can be easily adapted to change the flavor of the biscuits. For more savory biscuits, add cheese, onion powder, chives, thyme, or rosemary. Alternatively, adding cinnamon and sugar would create a lovely sweet variation.

homemade golden brown buttermilk biscuits from scratch in a cast iron skillet

Make Biscuits Ahead of Time

If you want fresh biscuits in the morning, but don’t want to wake up and prepare the dough, I can totally relate! One of my favorite parts about these biscuits is that you can prepare the dough in advance and bake them at a later time. To do so, prepare the biscuit dough and cut them as you normally would. Instead of baking them, transfer the biscuits to a parchment-lined dish and place them in the freezer for a few hours, until firm. You can then transfer them to a freezer-safe container and store them in the freezer until ready to use.

When you want a batch of biscuits, or even a single homemade biscuit, all you have to do is preheat the oven and bake them as you normally would. These biscuits bake up wonderfully from frozen.

I love the convenience factor of being able to bake fresh biscuits whenever I want them and in whatever quantity I need. It’s so handy on days when you want something homemade, but relatively hands-off, in the morning or need a quick side dish for a meal. I often make a double or triple batch of this recipe, whenever I make it, so I can keep my freezer stocked.

Equipment

I use a cheese grater to grate the cold butter directly into the flour mixture – I find it faster and easier than other methods.

You can use a baking sheet to bake these biscuits, but I personally love using a cast iron skillet. Here are some favorites:

I typically just cut biscuits into squares or wedges, but if you’d like classic round biscuits, you may enjoy having biscuit cutters.