Cathead Biscuits with Lingonberry jam

These flat iron biscuits, or skillet biscuits, are absolutely delicious! If you don’t want to heat up the house with your oven in the summertime, they’re the perfect choice for making biscuits, and they still taste just as great as coming out of the oven. You really can cook biscuits in a skillet on the stove, and this article will tell you just how to do it.

What Are Flat Iron or Skillet Biscuits?

They’re quick and they’re craggy and crusty. But if it’s quick you’re after, why not use our quick and easy biscuit method? We set out off to find out how well that method worked with flat iron biscuits.

Make them even easier! We sell a flat iron biscuit mix, so you can skip the extra ingredients and effort. All you have to do is add the water and cook them on the stove. You’ll have biscuits in minutes.

Get the easiest flat iron biscuit mix now!

How to Make Flat Iron (Skillet) Biscuits

Alford and Duguid were cooking theirs in a skillet on the stovetop. I like baking in a skillet but they were flipping theirs twice in the skillet to cook them all the way through and never using the oven. Why bother when you can stick them in the oven for ten minutes and forget about them. But it does give you a way to make biscuits in the summer without turning the oven on, so we tried them.

With our quick and easy biscuit method, we used butter. But we wanted these as crusty as possible and shortening makes a crustier biscuit. But we didn’t want to give up on taste of butter so we went 50/50. They worked. They’re quick. They’re good. Here’s the recipe.

Quick and Easy Flat Iron Biscuits Recipe

This is the stovetop version of our flat iron biscuits. If you don’t want to turn the oven on in the heat of the summer, this is the way to go. They also work as camping biscuits; you can cook them over an open campfire. You can get the recipe for baking them in the oven below.

This biscuit recipe filled an 11-inch skillet perfectly and made nine biscuits three to four inches across.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 2 tablespoons dry buttermilk
  • 1 cup cold milk
  • 4 tablespoons butter and four tablespoons shortening, melted together but cooled to warm (still liquid)

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and buttermilk powder together.
  2. Pour the melted fats into the cold milk, whisking until the fat solidifies and the milk looks curdled.
  3. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid mixture. Stir with a fork just until the batter clumps and form a wet mound in the bottom of the bowl.
  4. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in an 11-inch skillet.
  5. Using a 1/4 cup (2-inch diameter) ice cream scoop (4-ounce), scoop the batter from the bowl onto the hot frying pan, leaving 1 1/2 inches between the biscuits for expansion. As soon as you put the mounds in the pan, flatten then to less than an inch with the back of a wet spoon.
  6. Cook until they are crusty brown on the bottom, turn them and cook until the tops are brown. Turn them over, and cook the first side again until you drive the heat through the biscuits. Serve them hot.

Quick and Easy Flat Iron Biscuits (In the Oven)

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 2 tablespoons dry buttermilk
  • 1 cup cold milk
  • 4 tablespoons butter and four tablespoons shortening, melted together but cooled to warm (still liquid)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

  1. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and buttermilk powder together.
  2. Pour the melted fats into the cold milk, whisking until the fat solidifies and the milk looks curdled.
  3. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid mixture. Stir with a fork just until the batter clumps and form a wet mound in the bottom of the bowl.
  4. Using a 1/4 cup (2-inch diameter) ice cream scoop (4-ounce), scoop the biscuit batter from the bowl onto the pan, leaving just enough distance between the biscuits for expansion. The mounds should be about 1 1/2 inches high.
  5. Bake just until the tops of the biscuits are golden brown, ten to twelve minutes. (Baking times will vary with different pans.) Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a rack. After a few minutes, remove the biscuits to racks to cool and serve while still hot.

(Updated from May 14, 2014)

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