The No-Bisquick Red Lobster Biscuits

We have lots of once a year dinners. Once a year, I make baby back ribs with my marinate-in-homemade-bbq-sauce/slow-bake for hours/finish-on-the-grill process. Once a year, I attempt fried chicken. Once a year, I attend a fair and seek out a corndog, and remind myself why I don't eat corndogs more than once a year.

And once a year, we splurge on a mountain of crab legs, boil 'em up, melt a few sticks of butter and call it dinner. This ritual always occurs over the holidays, with my mother setting the precedent of the Christmas Eve crab leg dinner, and later, when mom decided to become a snowbird, our own little family shifting the annual crab leg feast over to New Years. But for various reasons, this past year Christmas and New Years came and went and the massive box of king crab legs remained in our freezer, a bulky beast that sat atop the rest of our frozen wild protein stash.

So one random Thursday after work, I asked my husband a simple question: "What's for dinner?"

"I don't know, what do you want for dinner?"

"I don't know, I just thought maybe you had something planned."

"Did you want me to start planning dinner?" (He knows I'm a little particular about my dinner plate.)

"Well, maybe once a week you could make dinner."

Five minutes later, I find the massive box of crab legs on our kitchen counter. "Let's have crab!" he announces proudly. And why not? Crab shouldn't necessarily be limited to holidays only, and in my mind, making it to Thursday is enough of a special occasion. I grabbed a glass of the cheap sauv blanc I keep in the fridge and called it a celebration.

I covered the table with paper (our local newspaper, the Bismarck Tribune, sells the ends of print rolls - it also makes great coloring/finger painting paper) while my dear husband started a large pot of boiling water. However, we still needed the biscuits. 

My mom established long ago that one cannot have a crab leg dinner without Red Lobster biscuits, the only other accompaniment allowed on the crab leg dinner table aside from bowls of melted butter. The classic imitate-the-restaurant recipe uses Bisquick, but not being a Bisquick kind of gal, I sought out a no-Bisquick version. Google to the rescue.

Ta-da! They taste the same with the same fluffy texture, you don't have to deal with the weird Bisquick ingredients (partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, anyone?), and you don't have a bright yellow box staring at you from the pantry every time you consider making pancakes, tempting you to take the easy-but-definitely-not-as-delicious route.

I made the biscuits while he boiled the crab. "So this counts as my dinner planning for the week, right?" he asks.

Yes, dear. Yes, it does. 

No-Bisquick Red Lobster Biscuits
Adapted from the great blog Brown Eyed Baker, check it out here.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1 cup shredded)
1 cup buttermilk, cold
½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled for 5 minutes

For the Topping:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, divided
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley (or ¼ teaspoon dried)

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, garlic powder and cayenne. Stir in the cheddar cheese; set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir together the buttermilk and melted butter until the butter forms small clumps. Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and mix gently with a rubber spatula just until a dough forms and no dry ingredients remain. Use a greased ¼-cup measuring cup to scoop out portions of dough. Place on the prepared baking sheet, leaving a little more than an inch between biscuits.

Bake until the biscuits are golden brown, about 12 minutes. While the biscuits are in the oven, stir together the 2 tablespoons melted butter, garlic powder and parsley. Remove the biscuits from the oven and immediately brush with the topping mixture. Allow to cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container or zip-top back at room temperature for up to 3 days.