You’ll love this easy drop biscuit recipe. Simply mix, drop onto your baking sheet, and bake!
I can’t get enough of these buttery drop biscuits. They are ridiculously easy and only take 30 minutes from start to first bite. Instead of rolling out and cutting into shapes, like these fluffy biscuits, all you need to do for this recipe is spoon (or drop) mounds of dough onto a baking sheet and bake.
No patting out, no rolling and no cutting required. Once you make them, I know you’ll be itching to make them again.
Key Ingredients
- Flour: I use all-purpose flour, but you can substitute it for self-raising flour, which already has baking powder and a little salt added. See my tips in the recipe for reducing the baking powder and salt.
- Baking powder: Helps our biscuits rise and fluff up a bit in the middle.
- Salt: It makes them taste amazing. If you use salted butter, you can leave the extra salt out.
- Butter: Makes these extra delicious and so tender. I also love brushing the baked biscuits with extra melted butter before serving (yum!).
- Milk: Brings our biscuit dough together and helps them bake to be tender. You can substitute the milk for buttermilk.
Find the full recipe with measurements below.
How to Make the Best Drop Biscuits
Tip 1: Cutting in the butter. To make drop biscuits, you will whisk flour, baking powder, and salt, then scatter over small cold butter cubes and work it in. Whichever method you choose, the goal is that the butter and flour mixture looks like coarse crumbs. You have three options:
- Use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour mixture.
- Use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour (my favorite). I do this when making my easy scones.
- Use a food processor to pulse the butter into the flour mixture. We do this when making our homemade pie crust.
Tip 2: This dough is supposed to be shaggy. When the butter and flour look like coarse crumbs, mix milk in using a fork. The key is to mix until a dough forms, but not to overdo it. Watch us do it in the video, it only takes 30 seconds or so of stirring.
This drop biscuit dough looks shaggy and might be a bit sticky. That’s okay, it is supposed to look that way!
Tip 3: Brush on butter. When you have a shaggy dough, drop mounds of it onto a baking sheet (or into a cast iron pan) and bake. Our biscuits take 10 to 15 minutes to bake, so it goes quickly. I highly recommend brushing a little extra melted butter on top as they come out of the oven. It makes them so delicious!
More Biscuit Recipes
Buttery Drop Biscuits
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
These drop biscuits are ridiculously easy to make. Once you make them, I just know you’ll be itching to make them again and again. The entire process can be done in under 30 minutes and they taste fantastic.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
8 tablespoons (115g) cold unsalted butter
1 ½ cups (190g) all-purpose flour
1 ¾ teaspoons baking powder
¼ to ½ teaspoon fine sea salt, see notes
½ cup (118ml) cold whole milk, plus more as needed
Directions
1Heat oven to 400°F (204°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat. Alternatively, set aside a medium cast iron pan.
2Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together until well blended.
3Remove one tablespoon of butter and set aside (this will be melted and brushed onto the biscuits after they are baked).
4Cut the remaining 7 tablespoons of butter into small cubes. If you are not immediately moving on to the next step, place the butter back into the refrigerator to keep cold.
5Scatter the cold butter cubes over the flour mixture then use a pastry blender or your fingers to cut or rub the butter in until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs (see photos or video for reference).
6Using a fork, gently stir the milk into the biscuit mixture until the dough comes together. It will be a bit sticky and look shaggy. If the dough is too dry, add a tablespoon or two more milk.
7Drop mounds of dough, about 3 tablespoons, onto the prepared baking sheet. Dough mounds should be about an inch apart from each other. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the biscuits are puffed and starting to turn brown on top. If some butter pools out around the bottom, it’s okay.
8Meanwhile, melt the reserved tablespoon of butter. When the biscuits come out of the oven, gently brush the butter onto the top of each. Serve warm.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Salt: I love my biscuits to be well seasoned with salt, which is why I choose to add ½ teaspoon of fine sea salt. If you don’t like your salt level as high, stick with ¼ teaspoon instead.
- Vegan variation: Use a cold vegan stick butter and non-dairy unsweetened milk.
- Measuring the flour: Flour should be spooned and leveled in the measuring cup. Use a spoon to add the flour into your measuring cup, and then use a flat edge to scrape the top of the cup flat. This method of adding flour to your measuring cup makes sure that you do not add too much flour to the dough.
- Self-raising flour: Omit the baking powder and salt in the recipe.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
The biscuits look so good and so does the corn bread. This is my email address can you send me those recipes? Thank you very much.
You are going to love both of those recipes 🙂 To make sure you don’t miss any of our recipes, there are many ways to signup for our free newsletter. Here is the link to our subscription page.
Easy to make, delicious.
I made these wonderful biscuits. I have tried other recipes & my family said best biscuits ever!!!! I used whole stick of butter in biscuits & 2 tbs melted butter in cast iron to coat bottom. I also used 1 cup of buttermilk. They were so buttery!! Thanks for the recipe!
I made these wonderful biscuits. I have tried other recipes & my family said best biscuits ever!!!! I used whole stick of butter in biscuits & 2 tbs melted butter in cast iron to coat bottom. I also used 1 cup of buttermilk. They were so buttery!! Thanks for the recipe!
Love the personal tweaks! 🙂
Fabulous recipe! Love the scoop and drop idea!! Biscuits are soft and super irresistible! Tip I’ve learned and use: Slightly freeze the stick of butter and shave in using a box grater = less handling of ingredients. End result: super flaky biscuits.
I used a triple milled whole wheat flour and made small biscuits. Oh my! They were delicious! Reminded me of pie crust! My new favorite drop biscuit recipe HANDS DOWN!
Very, very good recipe. I did mine using a food processor and they turned out great.
The biscuit were wonderful. Great recipe!
I blended all but milk in a ninja type blender. Added milk, dropped onto cooking mats and baked 13 minutes. When they came out I ran butter over them. Best ever!
The BEST biscuits I ever ate,and I made them.
To make these even easier, simply add everything to the blender and scoop them or assist them out of the blender onto the pan it worked wonderful and saves even more time for these great tasting biscuits
Yum! Just made these today as I love American food and they were so easy to make and taste so good. I’ll definitely be trying your other recipes starting with fluffy pancakes tomorrow as I have run out of my Aunt Jemima but I have a feeling I won’t be going back to store bought 😀
These are absolutely amazing drop biscuits. What’s also really nice is it’s easy to cut the recipe down to size. When it’s just me, its easy to cut this down to two biscuits. Light, fluffy and perfectly golden brown, deliciousness. Baked these biscuits in a cast-iron skillet for 12 minutes. Perfecto. For pie lovers out there, you should definitely try the piecrust recipe too, the best I’ve ever made.
You guys are the best! Your blondies and brownies are already a hit in our family and also among our friends. I just tried your drop biscuit recipe, and it’s heavenly!! I wonder why we were buying store-bought biscuits all these years. This year, somehow the stores were not carrying any biscuits and we desperately needed some for our strawberry jam. So I just decided to make some. Your biscuit recipe is simple, great and quick. They are so perfect – they’ll be gone by tomorrow!!
Simple recipe easy to make, just follow directions, tastes great
Easy directions. They made them look so good and easy. I followed the directions exactly and watched the video. However my dough was very dry. I kept adding tablespoons of milk and after I added 6 more Tbsp’s. I just went with it, even though it still wasn’t as gooey as in the video. Well obviously I still didn’t add enough milk because they just crumbled apart. If I tried this recipe again I would probably put closer to 3/4 cup of milk in. Better luck next time.
Absolutely delicious! This is the third recipe of yours that I’ve made. Third one we love as well!! Biscuits, pancakes and waffles recipes are my family’s favorites! My new go to for easy from scratch baking recipes hands down!
This was the BEST biscuit recipe I have ever found!!!! The texture, flavor, and smell is unlike any other biscuit recipe I’ve tried!!! The recipe was so easy to come together, and my bake time was about 15 minutes! So buttery, flavorful, and EASY! I will be making this again!!!
These biscuits are delicious! I needed about 2/3 c milk to achieve the right texture and baked on an insulated baking sheet lined with parchment. I also grated the butter which makes for faster combining. Thank you for posting this recipe. It’s a keeper.
Great recipe!! Used salted butter and then about 0.3t salt and it was great. Went to a hefty 2t on the baking powder, scooped with a muffin scoop to make 6 biscuits, and baked at 425. Twas perfect, thank you!
I can’t believe how good they turned out!! They was delicious!!
Very good and quick to put together.
Loved this recipe fluffy,flaky, and delicious my hubby and I really enjoyed it
Delicious, went great with gravy.
Delicious
I love this recipe! The 2nd time I made them, I added one small block of sharp cheddar, 1 1/2tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp paprika and made the cheddar bay biscuits and they were delicious too!
Light, fluffy and so satisfying! Love how easy these were and everyone loved them.
These biscuits are so perfect every time! I’ve made them 7 or 8 times for my family….everyone loves them! Thank you so posting this great recipe !
Wow! We are so happy you enjoy them so much! Thank you for coming back and sharing, Rob.
I could have done better with a pastry cutter or shredded frozen butter. Awesome recipe wi make bake again and again.
Estimated prep time is only if you have everything already portioned out and ready to cook. Actual prep is more like 10 plus minutes if you have to start from scratch. Cook time in my oven at 400° took about 16 minutes (I watched then from 11 minutes on) next time will try the higher recommended temp. They turned out very nice. Buttery, flaky, and with a nice golden crust on top. They’re literally on a cooling rack for my biscuits and gravy for tomorrow. I got a 7 net biscuits from this recipe. I’m glad it’s a smaller deal as it’s just the two of us.
The dough that came together as expected, gooey and sticky, etc. I did pre-chop and then freeze the butter niblets about 1/2” size prior to prep. It was a bit difficult getting those frozen butter pieces to combine into the flour initially, but it came together rather nicely. Next time I’ll either grate the frozen butter or use a pulse method in a food processor. I will use this recipe again for certain. The recipe is spot on. Its nice not having to use yeast ir eggs or fat specific ingredients. Next time I might cut my biscuits instead of using the drop method. Thank you so much.
Excellent recipe! Put a couple of tablespoons of sugar and didn’t have buttermilk. My husband loved them and asked if I would make strawberry shortcake using this recipe. It really is an amazing. Thank you so much!
I substituted buttermilk and they were amazing. Some Popeye’s Chicken restaurants used to make buttermilk drop biscuits, back in the day, and these taste just like them.
These biscuits were so good and so simple! Buttery, tender, crisp. I halved the recipe and used oat milk. Quick and delicious!
I made this recipe and it was absolutely perfect! My husband and kids LOVED them!!!! Thank you!!!
These turned out great and very yummy!