Easy Butter Swim Biscuits Recipe
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 resulting in a buttery biscuit with a tender crumb and crispy edges that melt in your mouth.
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 look at how easy it is to make these biscuits.
Butter Swim Biscuits Ingredients
Before starting, 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
Can I use self-rising flour in this recipe?
Yes. If you have self-rising flour, you can use it in place of the all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt.
What if I don’t have buttermilk?
You can make your own buttermilk by “souring milk.” You do this by placing 2 tablespoons of 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.
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 or in a cast iron skillet. Place the baking dish/skillet 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.
Note: Some people like to add cracked black pepper to their biscuit batter. This would be the time to do so, if you’d like.
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 powder 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.
Enjoy these biscuits with a drizzle of honey on top, along with your favorite breakfast meat and eggs, or simply with some jam or jelly. They also are great at dinner served with fried chicken.
How To Store Leftover Butter Swim Biscuits
Store leftover biscuits in an airtight container or covered with plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 2-3 days. For best results when eating later, reheat the biscuits in an oven or toaster oven at 350°F (175°C) for 5-10 minutes or until warmed through. If using an air fryer, preheat it to 350°F (175°C). Place the biscuits in the air fryer basket in a single layer, ensuring they are not overcrowded. Cook the biscuits in the air fryer for 3-5 minutes, checking halfway through to ensure even heating.
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
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.
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!
Your dough recipe has an error, it should only have one cup of buttermilk instead of two. That is why people are complaining about it being a batter vs. a dough that you have pictured. Compare to other dough recipes online or in cookbooks, it’s 2 1/2 cups flour to one cup of buttermilk. Otherwise I like this concept and will try it again. My first try I ended up with “batter” but will prefer a dough.
Nope. It takes 2 cups of buttermilk. Even IAmBaker and SouthernLiving’s recipes call for 2 cups.That’s why I refer to the dough as being “shaggy.”
Which is it? You list baking powder in the ingredients and then try to give us a chemistry lesson in your explanation writing baking SODA.
Sorry about that – I make mistakes. The answer is baking powder.
I omitted the sugar to avoid a “batter”. Excellent results! Ty!
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!
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 .
💕
Great recipe. Turned out wonderful. So easy.
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.
I am sorry it did not work out for you.
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.
Please come back and tell us about the end results.
So fast, so easy, so good! Thank you!
These biscuits are awesome! They’re great with jelly, or even better with homemade gravy!