Cathead Biscuits
Huge Southern biscuits, each as big as a cat's head, made with cold butter and buttermilk and baked at 220C for 18 minutes.
Photograph credit: Homemade Southern Buttermilk Biscuit with Sorghum Syrup by Georgiabrown24 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Where This Goes Wrong
Keep the butter and buttermilk cold.
Do not roll out or cut the dough.
Bake the biscuits close together for height.
How to Make Cathead Biscuits
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Heat the oven to 220°C / 430°F. Grease a 26 cm cast iron pan or a tray.
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Mix the flour, salt and sugar. Rub in the cold butter until the lumps are pea-sized.
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Pour in the buttermilk and stir until just combined into a wet, shaggy dough.
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Scoop 8 large mounds with floured hands and pack them close together in the pan.
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Bake for 18 minutes until deep golden. Brush with the melted butter and serve warm.
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What's Going On Here
It looks like a regular biscuit and is the size of a cat's head, which is where the name comes from. Cathead biscuits are an Appalachian tradition, a large, craggy biscuit that is not cut but scooped or pinched off the dough, giving a rough, rustic outline and a soft, shaggy crumb.
The dough is wetter than a rolled biscuit, closer to a thick batter. Use self-raising flour, if you have it, which is traditional for the South and gives a delicate crumb, along with cold butter or lard cut into the flour in pea-sized lumps. The cold fat steams in the oven and creates the flaky layers. Buttermilk goes in last, in one go, stirred just until the flour is damp.
Do not roll or cut the dough. Scoop eight rough mounds with a large spoon, flouring your hands lightly, and shape them gently into rounds without pressing. The craggy surfaces brown and crisp in the oven.
Pack the biscuits against each other in a cast iron pan or on a tray so they rise upwards, and bake in a hot oven until deeply golden. Brush with melted butter as they come out. Split and fill with sausage gravy, bacon and egg, or jam.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Best the day they are made. Reheat for 5 minutes at 180°C / 356°F.
Swaps and Variations
- Out of buttermilk? The usual stand-in is a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred into 250 ml of ordinary milk and left five minutes; it is thinner than cultured buttermilk, so a batter may need a little less of it.
- No self-raising flour to hand? The common home substitute is the same weight of plain flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder for every 150 g, sifted together well; the rise may not be identical to a bought self-raising flour.
Serving Cathead Biscuits
- Sausage gravy
- Bacon and egg
- Butter and jam
- Honey
What's in a Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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