I don’t need to give my friends even more excuses to show up at my house unannounced, but here I am with an important announcement: I have a trick for serving up warm, buttery biscuits at a moment’s notice because of a very simple method I learned when I was working at a diner when I was 22.
The diner no longer exists (I’m told the building is now a dispensary), but it was where everyone in town used to go for breakfast on the weekends—and that was the meal that diner did best. My best friend Matt would always get the same biscuits and gravy and I’d always get an omelet but with a biscuit instead of toast. I always assumed that they had been baking these biscuits fresh.
When I started working in the kitchen, though, I learned their dirty little secret. Biscuits were baked once, maybe twice a week, depending on need. Once baked and cooled, we stacked them in a big Cambro storage container and kept them in the fridge. When someone ordered a biscuit, we simply sliced one in half, buttered the cut side, and then heated the halves on a relatively cool zone on the flat top grill. As the butter melted and cooked, the cut sides of the biscuits crisped to a golden brown and the steam rose through the biscuit, returning just a little bit of moisture to the crumb and softening it for that fresh-baked effect. That’s it. That’s the method: simple and effective.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Micah Marie Morton
With those miraculously fresh-tasting biscuits in mind, I checked in with chef and author of her own Treasury of Southern Baking (and national treasure) Cheryl Day, who filled me in on her favorite ways to revive biscuits and put them to other uses. First, Day confirmed that storing biscuits in the fridge is fine as long as they’re in an airtight container. This keeps the biscuit fresh for up to five days. “For long term storage, wrap biscuits in plastic wrap, then with tin foil. Store for up to one month in the freezer,” she said.
Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking
Day also tells me that she likes the griddle method for reheating biscuits. “We do that for some of our biscuit sandwiches to bring them to the next level,” she says. If you want something a little simpler, but still effective, Day recommends loosely wrapping your leftover biscuits in foil, and placing them in a 350°F oven for six to eight minutes. “Pull the biscuits out, and peel the foil back to expose the tops of them. Return to the oven for another four to six minutes to crisp the exterior.” But her favorite method is even easier. “Simply halved, toasted in the toaster, and slathered with my favorite butter and jam,” she says. Hard to argue with that.
Beyond reheating
If you’re tired of using biscuits for sandwiches or as vessels for sausage gravy, Day offers some alternatives for repurposing any biscuits you have on hand after Thanksgiving. She likes turning them “into biscuit crumbs for meatloaf, or a Southern-inspired panzanella salad,” but one of her favorite things to do with leftover biscuits is to turn them into biscuit croutons for soups and salads. They’re buttery with a satisfying yet crumbly crunch, great in creamier soups and stews for that biscuits-and-gravy vibe. “It couldn’t be easier,” she says. “Just cube old biscuits, and bake at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden, tossing once halfway through.”
Once you start giving your biscuits new life as a crunchy topping or griddling those biscuit halves, odds are you may find yourself baking up another batch just so you’ll have them around a little longer. Heck, you might find that you like this reheated version even better than a fresh biscuit.
