Can You Fully Bake Pillsbury Biscuits In The Microwave?

There's nothing worse than craving something so deeply, without the means to get it. The buttery, flaky layers of Pillsbury biscuits constantly occupy my mind, but if there were no oven to bake them with, I would still find another way to heat them up — and that's exactly what I did. I tried baking biscuits in the microwave so you don't have to.

Standard Pillsbury biscuits need to be baked at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around 15 minutes. I'm no electrician, but I'm pretty sure a microwave isn't nearly as powerful as an oven, so I didn't see how it could sufficiently heat the biscuits in that timeframe. Still, I tried it anyway, and it wasn't the best idea. Starting with two biscuits, I microwaved them using 30-second intervals in hopes that they would turn out somewhat decent. It took about five or six whirls in the microwave to get them to a point where I felt like they could be safely consumed (I'm deathly afraid of salmonella).

Were the biscuits fully cooked? Sure. Is it something I would do even if I had other methods at my disposal? Absolutely not. The biscuits came out pretty stale and chewy, unlike the soft, flaky layers you would get in the oven or even an air fryer. While I wouldn't spring for microwaving biscuits all the time, if you truly had no other options, it's a reliable method.

Try these techniques for cooking biscuits without an oven

With the remaining six biscuits left, I was still on the hunt for other ways to properly cook them. One method I kept seeing was to utilize the defrost setting on the microwave. The defrost button decreases the appliance's power in order to thaw food rather than cook it, so this seemed like a bad idea — and it was. I set the weight of my two biscuits as 1 pound, and the microwave heated them for three minutes. That's the same time it took to heat the first set of biscuits using 30-second intervals, but with the microwave's reduced power, this yielded a different result. They were pretty raw, so I decided to finish the biscuits on the stove instead of returning them to the microwave. If you have access to both a microwave and a stove, but no oven, this is a method I would recommend. With the stove set to a low heat, I browned the biscuits for about two minutes on each side until they were fully cooked.

The best non-oven method I tested, however, was to skip the microwave and simply fry up the canned biscuits in a skillet. I set the stove to medium-low and greased the skillet before heating the biscuits. After a minute, the top layer separated from the rest of the biscuit; I removed them and heated the insides until they were slightly crisp, with the soft, flaky layers still intact.

Recommended