This Butter Swim Biscuit recipe is one of the easiest biscuits that you can make. Buttermilk biscuits are baked in a pool of melted butter. The result is a tender crumb with crispy edges that melts in your mouth.
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Make these scrumptious buttermilk biscuits and enjoy with breakfast, lunch, or dinner! Perfect to serve as part of a brunch menu or on its own for any occasion! They are the quintessential Southern breakfast comfort food.
These melt-in-your-mouth homemade biscuits are perfect served alongside scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage links, fried chicken, and fresh fruit salad. They are also pretty awesome with strawberry jam or simply by themself.
These amazing biscuits are easier to make than typical buttermilk biscuits because you don’t have to grate or chop cold butter and work it into the biscuit dough. And you don’t need a rolling pin or biscuit cutter! Let’s take a look at how easy it is to make these biscuits.
🥘Butter Swim Biscuits Ingredients
Before you get started, make sure you have all of your ingredients in place (mise en place). For basic Butter Swim Biscuits, you need the following simple ingredients:
- butter
- all-purpose flour
- sugar
- baking powder
- salt
- buttermilk
🔪 Instructions
The very first thing to do is to create the “pool” of butter. That’s what the biscuit dough needs in order to “swim.” Get it?
To make the buttery pool, place a stick of butter in an 8×8-inch square baking dish. Place it in your oven and let it melt while the oven heats up to 450 degrees.
Be sure to keep an eye on the butter. You don’t want it to burn. If it browns just a little bit, that will be fine. You can also remove it from the warm oven when it is mostly melted. The warm dish will continue to melt the butter even once it has been removed from the toasty environment.
Once you have taken care of the pool of butter, it’s time to move on to the biscuit making. This will only take a couple of minutes.
Next, whisk together all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisking it together is a good way of getting the dry ingredients well blended.
Pour buttermilk into the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon. The dough will become “shaggy” once the buttermilk starts to react with the baking powder.
It’s baking chemistry at its finest – baking soda is a base and buttermilk is an acid and when the two get together, they create carbon dioxide bubbles. That is what helps to make the biscuits rise.
Cool, huh?
Now place 9 spoonfuls of biscuit batter into the pan of melted butter, aka butter bath. I place 3 rows of 3. This makes it easier for the butter to get in between the biscuits. Alternatively, you can just place all of the batter into the butter and create one ginormous biscuit. You can later cut that biscuit with a sharp knife or bench scraper into however many biscuits you would like.
⏲️ Baking Time
Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Carefully remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes or until the biscuits have reached the desired doneness. What do I mean by that?
Some people like their biscuits to be nice and golden brown. Some people define golden brown as being dark, while others like it on the lighter side. So, it all depends on how you define golden. The main test that you need to pass is the wooden pick test.
🥢 Wooden Pick Test
Insert a toothpick or wooden pick or some other food-safe device like a skewer into the center of the baked biscuits. When you pull the pick out, it should come out clean. If there is biscuit dough still on the pick, bake for an additional 5 minutes and then re-test.
How To Store Butter Swim Biscuits
Store leftover biscuits in an airtight container or covered with plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 2-3 days.
🤷🏻♀️ Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. If you have self-rising flour, you can use it to replace the all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt.
You can make “sour milk” by placing 2 tablespoons of white vinegar in a 2-cup measuring cup and adding whole milk to the 2-cup mark. Let it sit for 10 minutes. This will make a buttermilk substitute.
If the calculations are correct in the app that I use, there are approximately 31 grams of carbs in each biscuit. (This batch makes 9 delicious biscuits.)
Love biscuits? Be sure to check out these other delicious biscuit recipes at Southern Kissed:
- Biscuits and Sausage Gravy
- Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit Copycat Recipe
- Southern Biscuit Recipe Made Without Buttermilk
- Keto Cheddar Bay Biscuits
📖 Recipe
Butter Swim Biscuits
Equipment
- 8-inch baking dish
- Mixing bowl
Ingredients
- 1 stick butter
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 2 cups buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450° Fahrenheit. Place butter in an 8×8-inch baking dish and place in the oven to melt. Keep a watch on the butter and do not let it burn. Once the butter has melted, remove it from the oven and let the oven finish heating.
- Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Pour buttermilk into flour mixture and mix with a spoon to form a shaggy dough.
- Scoop 9 spoonfuls of biscuit batter into the pan of melted butter.
- Cover baking dish with aluminum foil and bake for 15minutes.
- Remove foil from baking dish and bake biscuits for an additional 10 minutes or until baked through and golden brown.
- Remove from oven and allow biscuits to cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Video
Nutrition
Now you know how to make a scrumptious batch of buttery biscuits that will melt in your mouth with this easy-to-follow, scratch recipe.
Don’t Forget To Come Back And Let Me Know How Your Butter Swim Biscuits Turned Out!
Gina says
I omitted the sugar to avoid a “batter”. Excellent results! Ty!
Jenny says
It isn’t dough, but batter. I poured it into the melted butter. No way it could be formed. It tasted very good and I will keep the recipe, but texture is like cake not biscuits. Love the crunchy bottom!
Tammaney Willmann says
Trust the process , y’all. Yes,it doesn’t look like a traditional biscuit dough, but it cooks up beautifully.
I mixed all my ingredients in my food processor and melted the butter in a cast iron on the stove. Dumped in the dough and spread it around. It’s a wonderful recipe that I have made several times and my mother in law requests them when ever she stays with us .
Lynda says
💕
Linda Melton says
Great recipe. Turned out wonderful. So easy.
Sharon says
I didn’t get a dough, more like a batter and it was impossible to scoop or spread onto the melted butter. Wasted 2 1/2 cups of flour and 2 cups of buttermilk.
Lynda says
I am sorry it did not work out for you.
GS says
I agree! I did the exact measurements, but it was a batter, not a dough. I just put it in the oven. We’ll see if it turns into biscuits.
What I don’t understand is how anyone else got a different result and ended up with a dough? 2 1/2 cups of flour and 2 cups of liquid does not make a dough.
Lynda says
Please come back and tell us about the end results.
Angela Mason says
So fast, so easy, so good! Thank you!
Greg Howell says
These biscuits are awesome! They’re great with jelly, or even better with homemade gravy!