The Flakiest, Fluffiest Biscuits You Will Ever Eat | Eric Kim | NYT Cooking

Eric Kim was in Portland, Maine, when he encountered the best biscuits he’s ever had outside the South. Crusty on the outside, tender and flaky on the inside, these Buttermilk Sugar Biscuits are the work of Briana Holt, an owner and the head baker at Tandem Coffee + Bakery. At Tandem, the sturdy biscuits are split and served slathered with butter and fruit jam or, in an especially divine combination, cream cheese and hot pepper jelly.

Read Eric’s story: https://nyti.ms/3mLn763
and get the recipe: https://nyti.ms/3URCMNu

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Heck yeah I’m Eric Kim I’m a cooking columnist for the New York Times today we’re making buttermilk sugar biscuits these are so fantastic this is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten they’re very unique I’ve never tasted anything like it I’m from the south right I’ve had

Many biscuits but this biscuit is such a new taste to me it is so flavorful the sugar creates that gorgeous crust right out of the oven it’s super tender on the inside I went to Portland Maine last Thanksgiving my partner found this bakery called tandem this Bakery always

Has a line out the door but that line is absolutely worth waiting in this biscuit has this incredible crust it was so different than any other biscuit I’d ever had when I was looking at the display case the baker herself Brianna Holt walked up to me and she was like

Are you Eric and I was like yeah are you Brianna and then we just like hit it off I followed Brianna’s recipe I’m not like the world’s best baker but the fact that on my first try it it came out perfectly like came out exactly how I had it in

Maine and I felt very smug I felt better than everyone else in the world I was like wow I’m really talented the real truth is that it’s it’s because of Brianna’s Direction so I’m really grateful to her for teaching me this biscuit is incredible I’m gonna walk you

Through it and I have some notes here because I want to make sure you know every little detail because those details will not only help you in the kitchen but they’ll also make you feel very empowered while you make these what’s great about this recipe is you don’t need any

Special equipment you could do the thing where you process the butter to turn it into small pieces before you mix it into the flour but the method that really works well for me and the thing that I learned from Brianna is to grade it it’s not quite

As course of a great as like a big you know cheese grate it’s more of like I think these holes it’s not like a fine grade either that’s like too fine I use this because it’s what I have at home and I like the way it looks I’ll show you it’s pretty

Satisfying open it up and keep some of it on so I just have something to hold on to you just need pressure you’re gonna do two sticks actually okay that’s basically it we’re gonna freeze this because you want really cold butter I have tried this overnight like freezing the butter overnight and there

Is such a thing as too cold butter actually so 10 minutes is the perfect amount of time and now I’m going to mix up the dry ingredients we’re gonna start with three cups of flour I’m just gonna scoop and level so these are called buttermilk sugar biscuits because the sugar is kind of

What makes them different I think a lot of purists they might be like that’s not a biscuit that’s a cookie but they’re biscuits you’ll see they’re gorgeous about 100 grams baking powder and salt perfect timing that took 10 minutes right so we’re gonna get the butter out

Yeah let’s see what’s in this freezer got some vanilla bean ice cream vegetable chicken stew oh that looks like my Brunswick stew and that’s from like so long ago yum if anyone wants that Bagel Bites delicious okay You want to wait until it feels like white chocolate I love white chocolate this isn’t so satisfying one thing you could do is put parchment under your plate or whatever so it doesn’t stick but I forgot to so you want as much of the butter to touch the flour as possible buttermilk

I love this instruction by Brianna she told me to add the buttermilk in two rounds because the reason is you want to hydrate the flour evenly if you added it all at once it would like kind of Clump in a lawn area it’s pretty crumbly and I

Like that she says that she’s like don’t worry it’s going to be crumbly at this stage if it’s not crumbly then you may have over mixed you know this is like good enough for me there’s no like big pocket of Buttermilk a lot of the mixing happens here so

Let’s do that bench flour it’s gonna seem crumbly right but it’s going to come together you want to like form it into a rectangle the bench scraper is going to be really helpful for these edges each time you fold it you just want it to sort of resemble this a

Little bit the first fold you’re going to take the top and fold it over hamburger style it’s going to be crumbly it’s going to kind of like fall apart and be awkward I know it seems like very like what it’s crazy okay and then I’m gonna do it about four more times you’re

Just like using the the rolling pin to sort of get it into a general shape so see how like I made it into a rectangle again and now I’m gonna do it turn it over on itself again okay while you’re simultaneously creating layers you’re also bringing the dough

Together flour your rolling pin you want to make sure it’s it doesn’t stick see how it’s coming together see how each time we do it it’s like a little less messy and you like stragglers just put in the center the more you do it the more it will come together

At this stage I’m feeling it it’s like a little wetter the flour and the buttermilk and the butter they’re like coming together into their own gorgeous you also kind of want to turn it sometimes because you just want to make sure it’s not sticking now that the

Dough is held together this last fold is really for Aesthetics this is the final fold that was the last fold looks awesome what I really want to do now is just flatten out a little bit so the two layers kind of like stick but also so

That it’s an inch and a half tall and you’re trying to create a general Square I would say I want to make sure I’m pretty even on all sides this one’s a needs to be a little flatter pretty good yeah one and a half perfect you want to

Cut them into nine squares so three by three just vertically done [Applause] when you place them on the sheet you just want to flip them you’re gonna bake them for about like 30 minutes I found that 25 was like perfect in my oven but some people need to do longer just check

Them you’re gonna have to rotate the pan halfway anyway let’s go let’s go in wow really happy with those and now you can clean or do what I do and just like put it off for like a week sometimes I’ll have like my counter looking like this for like days I’m like

Kind of messy I’m trying to work on it smells amazing okay one fun thing that kind of happens when these bake they sort of like accordion over but you know they’re gonna taste good and the fun thing about these is you do end up just splitting them open

And slathering them with butter anyway brush them with butter and add some flaky sea salt you could do butter and jam but really what I think is super special is the pepper jelly with cream cheese Brianna told me that when she started selling these biscuits she

Decided to do the cream cheese and red pepper jelly combination the cream cheese isn’t as greasy as butter the pepper jelly gives it sort of a savoriness it’s really the sharpness from the pepper jelly that adds a lot to this biscuit this is a great biscuit it has

This crispy sugary crackly crust which I think is what makes this special even if you are a biscuit purist Southern biscuit purist I recommend trying these they’re very different in style you can make these for Sunday breakfast Sunday brunch whatever but you can also have them like at the dinner table I think

They are so delicious thanks thanks for watching you can get the recipe at nyt wait sorry I know the marketing person wants me to be like you can get this recipe and many more at New York Times cooking All right