Virginia · Starter
Virginia Ham Biscuits
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- For the biscuits: 375g flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp soda, 115g cold butter, 60g lard, 300ml cold buttermilk
- 300g country ham, sliced very thin
- Butter, softened
- Hot mustard or fig preserves
The skills inside
Letter-folding doughRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cut the cold fats into the dry ingredients until pea-sized, then stir in the buttermilk just until it comes together.
- Pat to 2cm on a floured board, fold in thirds twice, and cut small rounds straight down without twisting.
- Bake at 220C for 12-14 min until risen and gold. Cool slightly. 14 min
- Split each biscuit, butter the faces, and fold in a ruffle of ham.
- Add a dab of mustard or preserves and serve warm or at room temperature.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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