"Damaeus" > wrote in message
...
>I accidentally posted this first to rec.food-cooking....here's a post for
> this group:
>
> I like biscuits now and then, and I got the itch to have some a while back
> when I was watching the Food Network and saw Tyler Florence's version. He
> shocked me when he said to use vegetable shortening, his reason being that
> he found that butter tends to burn, while shortening doesn't.
>
> Well, here's the recipe, first of all:
>
> http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/t...pe2/index.html
>
> Okay, I tried the recipe. I have to say they were not unedible, but
> nowhere near the quality of biscuits I had made using butter instead of
> shortening. These biscuits came out reminding me of store-bought, canned
> biscuits. I blame the shortening, because all shortening is, is
> hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. I was skeptical of them for
> that reason alone.
>
> That said, I had normally made biscuits with plain whole milk, not
> buttermilk. We normally don't keep buttermilk in the house, but my
> roommate had a craving for fried chicken with buttermilk batter, so since
> we had some left, I made buttermilk biscuits, then buttermilk pancakes a
> few days later. The biscuits did rise nicely, however. But they turned
> out with a very yellow color inside, which surprised me greatly. They
> were quite white going in, but you'd think I'd laced them with turmeric,
> they came out so yellow. (I used unbleached flour.)
>
> As for the doneness, there was an even, brown crust all the way around it,
> that was almost cookie-like in texture, about a millimeter thick. I
> layered it as he suggested on TV, and as a result, they simply pulled
> apart like a biscuit-bun, no need for a knife to cut it in half.
>
> Once I get some more flour, I'm going to try buttermilk biscuits again
> before it expires, using butter instead of shortening to compare.
>
> What is your experience with using butter versus shortening? So far, I'm
> not impressed with shortening, but I may have to blame the buttermilk if
> using butter in the next go-around results in the same type of experience.
>


I've never found butter to work well in biscuits. You get a crispy rather
than soft biscuit. I don't like the heavy taste anyway as I put butter on
the biscuits. I have always used lard or vegetable shortening. Lard makes
the best biscuits IMO.

Paul