Let
me start off by saying that there are a lot of different recipes for biscuits,
and several different methods of cooking them in a Dutch oven. I don’t claim to have the ultimate biscuit
cooking knowledge. This recipe for
biscuits is what I would call a survivalist recipe. It uses only basic ingredients that can be
stored for a good while; no butter, or milk, or buttermilk, etc. You can change the recipe to make a tastier
biscuit; but, truth is, these are not too shabby.
The
cooking equipment that you’ll need is:
Medium
size mixing bowl
Half-cup
measure
Teaspoon
measure
Bowl
or coffee pot to hold water
Fork
Dutch
oven
Biscuit
pan
3
lug nuts or small stones to put under the biscuit pan
Lid
lifter
Camp
shovel
The
recipe ingredients are:
2
cups self-rising flour
1
teaspoon salt
½ cup
vegetable shortening or lard
Water
Before
you mix up your biscuit dough you need to build a good hardwood fire. You need some good coals to cook on, and it may
take from 45 minutes to an hour for your fire to burn down properly.
Once
your fire is built, set your Dutch oven next to the fire in order to pre-heat
it. Turn the Dutch oven occasionally to
heat it evenly.
When
the fire has burned down pretty good, it is time to mix up your biscuit dough. This recipe is for a small batch that will
feed two or three people. Start by
placing two cups of self-rising flour in your mixing bowl.
Add
one teaspoon of salt and mix it into the flour.
Next
add ½ cup of shortening or lard (for a better biscuit use half butter and half shortening).
Use
your fork to cut the shortening into the flour.
Mash
and mix until the shortening is evenly distributed and the flour looks like
coarse sand.
Now you can start adding water (or milk or
buttermilk for a tastier biscuit). Add
the water a little at a time, mixing as you go.
Keep
adding water until you have a dough that doesn’t stick to the mixing bowl or
your hands.
Let
the dough rest for a few minutes while you grease your biscuit pan with
shortening.
For
quick and easy camp biscuits I like to tear off chunks of the dough, press them
into a ¾ inch thick disk with my fingers, and place them in the biscuit pan. If you’re cooking in the kitchen, you can
roll the dough out on a floured cutting board and cut the biscuits out with a
biscuit cutter. They don’t taste any
different. They just look prettier.
Now
turn to your fire and shovel out a bed of coals to set your Dutch oven on.
Put
your three lug nuts in the bottom of the Dutch oven,
And
set your biscuit pan down into the oven.
The lug nuts will hold the pan up off of the bottom of the oven and
allow the heat to circulate around the pan better.
Put
the lid on the Dutch oven and shovel an even layer of coals onto the lid.
Let
the biscuits cook for ten minutes, then use your lifter to rotate the Dutch
oven 180 degrees one direction. Then lift the lid and rotate it 180 degrees
back the other direction. This is,
again, to try and keep the heat distributed evenly.
Let
the biscuits cook for another ten minutes then carefully remove the lid.
You
should now have a nicely cooked pan of hot biscuits waiting for some butter and
jelly or maybe a nice ladle full of sausage gravy.
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