Biscuits, Pancakes, and Fried Chicken

As you might guess from the past two posts, I’ve always been interested in how to minimize food waste by repurposing leftover food. In fact, I was pretty pleased to see that was Gordon Ramsay’s challenge to the last four remaining chefs of Hell’s KItchen (I’ve been watching season one on Hulu). So when the Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing resulted in over three cups of leftover buttermilk, I started thinking through ideas to use it up before I had to dump another bottle down the drain. Unaided by technology, I came up with three basic ideas: buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk pancakes or waffles, more buttermilk dressing.

Buttermilk Biscuits

One of the first advance reader copies for NetGalley was a book called Home Cooked by Anya Fernald. My review of the cookbook was mixed, but I did keep its recipe for homemade buttermilk biscuits. It had basic ingredients, basic techniques, and really basic steps. The hardest part about the recipe was cutting butter into flour until the mixture looked like sand. I had done the recipe at least three different times, and the biscuits were always cravable little morsels.

It was only logical that I first thought of this recipe as a means to use up my leftover buttermilk. I started the recipe before 10am on a Saturday so that I would have biscuits for breakfast that morning, and a few other mornings in the future, if I didn’t snack on them. I took my time cutting the stick of cold butter into the dry mixture of flour, baking soda, and baking powder. After I had done my best with that, I stirred in the buttermilk and scooped out nine biscuits onto a well greased baking tray. I was so excited!

When I pulled the biscuits out from the oven, they didn’t look quite as I had remembered them. They had spread rather than puffed, and were a rather deep golden brown. I figured that my work cutting the butter into the dry ingredients hadn’t been the best, so the larger bits of butter melted, causing the biscuits to spread rather than puff. And I did opt for the higher of the two cooking times, so that solved the mystery of the deep brown color.

And then I tasted the edge of a biscuit, because the biscuits themselves were still too hot. It tasted a little off, but that’s what edges taste like, especially if they are hot. Once the biscuits cooled down for a few minutes, I pulled out the butter and the homemade strawberry lavender jam from the refrigerator. Again, so excited for my biscuit!!!

I tried to slice the top off of the biscuit so that I could put some butter and jam in it, but it so flaky that the top fell apart. I popped a piece of the crumbled top into my mouth. The texture was right, but the taste was not. It tasted like I had licked the inside of a tin can. I couldn’t believe it! I tried another taste, and it was worse than the first. I put my biscuit back on the plate, put the butter and jam back into the refrigerator, and went upstairs to take a nap.

When I woke up from my nap, I had an odd thought: what if I swapped the baking soda and the baking powder in my biscuit recipe? I know I put in 1 1/2 tablespoons of baking soda from the orange box and 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder from the silver can. But what if I remembered the recipe incorrectly? What if the measurements were reversed? That might account for the metallic taste.

When I finally motivated to check the recipe, I realized that my odd thought wasn’t so odd. I really had switched the measurements on the baking soda and baking powder. The entire batch was ruined. Into the trash they all went.

Buttermilk Pancakes

A few hours after I had tossed my buttermilk biscuits, I rediscovered the small box of pancake mix that Little Z (my good friend from DC) had brought had left behind after her visit for the 2017 Holiday Dessert Party. Only buttermilk, egg, and melted butter were required to complete the mix. And I had all of those! So I set the box aside with plans to make pancakes for breakfast the following morning.

Since I had two serious kitchen fiascos in the past twelve hours, my confidence wasn’t too high. I fully expected the pancakes to somehow fail miserably. Bad things do come in threes! Much to my surprise, all eight of them turned out beautifully. That gave me enough leftover pancakes to have for breakfast the following day as well.

More Buttermilk Dressing?

After the failed biscuits and the spectacular pancakes, I had about one cup (or maybe one and one-half cups) buttermilk left in my refrigerator. That was just enough buttermilk to make more buttermilk blue cheese dressing. But I didn’t get any lettuce in that week’s CSA, so I would have to buy some for the salad. And I’d also need more blue cheese, if not more of other ingredients as well.

So I got the genius idea to check for other buttermilk recipes on Epicurious. After getting sidetracked on popsicle molds for wine popsicles, I ran the search. The results were not as nearly as fun as what I had been previously looking at. However, I uncovered one use of buttermilk that I had unfortunately forgotten: when making fried chicken, you are supposed to marinate the chicken overnight in buttermilk before you coat it with seasoned flour and fry it in canola oil. I checked my recipe in the family cookbook and, sure enough, that entailed marinating the chicken overnight in buttermilk as well. I hadn’t tried my recipe in almost a decade, so it seemed like the right time to give it a thorough test.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

Once the concept of fried chicken entered my mind, I couldn’t get rid of it. I love good fried chicken. When I was working in South America, my driver and I would go out for fried chicken at a little place near the office at least once a month. It was so good! I can barely stand eating the mass produced fried chicken from that fast food place or from the grocery store; however, give me the choice of chicken and waffles for brunch at a decent restaurant, and I’m super happy.

The next big decision was which fried chicken recipe to try. I liked the recipe in the family cookbook, but the timing seemed off and might result in a dry piece of chicken. There was a kefir battered cast iron skillet fried chicken, but that only had rating of less than two out of four forks. There was a rosemary brined buttermilk fried chicken that had high ratings and a fair number of reviews. So that was a strong possibility. Shortly after that on the list of recipes was a garam masala fried chicken, which absolutely fascinated me. Not that I knew exactly what garam masala was or where to find it, but for some reason I felt like I had to try it. So I added both garam masala and Bell’s Poultry Seasoning - the key ingredient in my fried chicken recipe - to my grocery list and headed out to the grocery store.

Sure enough, I found both garam masala and Bell’s in the spice section. The garam masala was in the nice clean alphabetical display of gourmet spices. The Bell’s was hidden on a shelf down near the floor. Since I was hungry, and not of a mind to make serious decisions, I bought them both along with several pounds of chicken thighs, a 48 ounce bottle of canola oil, and another bottle of buttermilk.

In the end, I chose to go with the garam masala recipe from Epicurious. It seemed different, and I was in the mood for something different. As soon as I got home from the grocery store, I mixed the buttermilk and spices in a gallon ziploc. I skipped the quarter cup of salt because the majority of the reviews for the recipe claimed that it was too salty. And since my schedule for the week was a little unpredictable, I didn’t quite know when I would be able to actually pull the chicken out of the buttermilk to fry. Under those circumstances, I definitely didn’t want the chicken sitting in a brine solution.

I mixed the spiced flour at the same time I mixed the buttermilk marinade because I already had the majority of the spices out on the counter. I figured that the flour mixture would keep well in a sealed container until I needed to use it. So why haul out all these spices again?

As it turns out, it was a few days before I had the free time after work to bread and fry the chicken. In all honesty, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Sure, it would have gone more quickly if I had cut off the excess skin before I put the chicken thighs in the buttermilk marinade, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly back then. Other than that extra step, all I had to do was pull the chicken out of the buttermilk, dredge it in the spiced flour, and set it aside until the oil reached 375F.

Believe it or not, actually frying the chicken was quite simple. The trick was being patient enough for the oil to reach 375F, which I constantly checked using a digital thermometer (mine is safe up to 450F). Then I dropped as much chicken as I could into the pan and walked away for six minutes. After the timer barked, I flipped all the pieces over and walked away for another six minutes. When the next timer went off, it was time to pull the chicken out onto its paper towel lined plate and start the next batch.

Even before the second batch had finished its first timer, I had a piece of the fried chicken on my plate! It was hot, but it was so good. I probably should have checked the internal temperature of the chicken before removing it from the oil because it was so juicy that I was concerned it might be undercooked. But the juices ran clear, so I wasn’t all that concerned. However, I did check the internal temperatures of the second batch before I moved them from the oil to the plate, just to be sure.

The Verdict

Thanks to my inexplicable craving for fried chicken, I have another three cups of buttermilk left in my refrigerator. Fortunately, I received some gorgeous red lettuce in my week four CSA share, so the delicious buttermilk blue cheese dressing is back on the table. And since I know what I did wrong with the buttermilk biscuit recipe, those are definitely happening again - with the correct chemical proportions! And once I’m all done with that, I’m going to try to avoid bringing buttermilk into the house for another few months!