The Easy Make-Ahead Technique All Biscuit Lovers Should Memorize

There's something truly magical about biting into a soft, warm buttermilk biscuit. Not only can these Southern biscuits be a great addition to a breakfast spread, either as the base for a sandwich or accompaniment to sausage gravy, but they can also stand in as a quick side dish for a casserole dinner. Granted, store-bought biscuit mixes tend to leave something to be desired. But homemade batches also take so much time and effort to whip up. How can you make a choice between the lesser of these two evils here? 

Rest assured that there's an intermediary option: To make homemade biscuit mix ahead of time and freeze it. The process is quite simple; all you need to do is combine your dry ingredients (like the flour, leavening agents, and salt) with grated, frozen butter, and then place it in your freezer. Butter is easier to grate when it's frozen, and it will more readily disperse into your biscuit mix than butter that's warm and clumpy. 

When the craving for biscuits strikes, pull your mix out of the freezer, add your buttermilk, shape, and bake your biscuits. Your bagged biscuit mix will stay fresh for about six months, which means you can make it and bake later that day or months later. 

The really important part of this hack is to wait to add your buttermilk until you're just about ready to bake your biscuits. Otherwise, the liquid and acidity in the buttermilk will prematurely cause the leavening agents to kickstart. After a while, your biscuits will lose their puffiness and fizz, and will, in turn, come out of the oven sad and stodgy.

You can also hack this tip by adding dried buttermilk powder directly to your bag before you pop it in the freezer. Buttermilk is an ingredient that not many people keep on hand, so using the powdered version may require you to take less frequent trips to the store to get a new bottle (though, there are tons of uses for leftover buttermilk). Be sure to look at the package directions for the dried buttermilk, though, as some bags require you to add a different ratio of water to powder than others. That way, you'll know exactly how much water to add to your make-ahead biscuit mix when the time comes.