These 6-Ingredient Butter Swim Biscuits Are Even Better Than My Grandma’s

When I was a kid, my maternal grandmother, Thennie, came to stay with me during the summer. This was a real treat since I feared camp, but also because it was just us somehow, even though my mother had 11 other siblings (no, I'm not kidding), so there were dozens of other grandkids she could have been taking care of instead. Maybe my grandma, who hailed from Virginia, liked that my home in New Jersey was 420 miles away from the chaos of our massive extended family.

In addition to enjoying the one-on-one time with my grandmother and avoiding camp, another highlight of these childhood summers was the fact that she and I ate whatever we wanted—and a good biscuit was something Grandma Thennie and I could genuinely agree on. She was one of the few people I knew who always had buttermilk in their fridge. It was an ingredient she used often, not just around the holiday season. For biscuits and cornbread, yes, but she also drank it— she would crumble up her cornbread in her cup of buttermilk and eat it with a spoon. We often used buttermilk to make what she called butter biscuits.

These butter biscuits (or butter swim biscuits) were a great project for me as a child because they are not as fussy as standard buttermilk biscuits—they're more like drop biscuits, but even easier because all the batter is simply dumped into one pan. You can have all the rich, buttery flavor and tender texture without the rolling, laminating, and cutting. She did warn me, “Now Kelli, you eat these all the time and you’ll be in trouble.” At the time, I thought she meant I'd be in trouble with my parents, but now I know that the amount of butter in her biscuits was a lot, even for a Southern belle like my grandma.

I hadn't had butter swim biscuits for years until recently, when I tried this recipe from our Alabama-based test kitchen colleague Jasmine Smith. Jasmine's butter swim biscuits look just like my grandma's, but they're even more tender. One key difference is that Jasmine's recipe calls for all butter—two whole sticks of it—while my grandmother used both butter and a healthy dose of margarine out of habit. She was a child of the Depression and believed margarine was a wonder product— there was always a ridiculously large tub of Country Crock in her fridge. 

Another similarity between my grandmother's biscuits and these is the way they bubble as they come out of the oven. I remember not waiting long enough and burning my fingers. “You’ll remember to wait next time, won’t cha?” she said. I sure won’t. But maybe you will when you make these biscuits at home. And, yes, they are called butter swim biscuits because they are positively swimming in butter—so much so that you may not even feel the need to slather them in butter before eating them. But we certainly won’t stop you. Read on to learn about the key techniques for making these biscuits and to get the full recipe.

4 Tips to Make the Best Butter Swim Biscuits

Use the right flour for the job. We recommend choosing a soft wheat flour, such as White Lily, rather than regular all-purpose flour (such as Gold Medal or Pillsbury) for biscuits that have a tender crumb and pillowy-soft texture. All-purpose soft wheat flour has lower protein content than all-purpose flour (5-9% versus all-purpose flour’s 9-12%). That means it has a lower capacity for gluten development, and works well in chemically-leavened baked goods like cupcakes, cookies, and, of course, biscuits. In developing this recipe, Jasmine tested with both White Lily's soft-wheat all-purpose flour and regular all-purpose flour and found that the biscuits made with regular all-purpose flour were denser, chewier, and didn't absorb the butter as well as those made with the soft-wheat flour, resulting in a somewhat greasy biscuit.

Get your butter cold, and use a lot of it. Don’t just keep your butter cold in the fridge—the trick here is to freeze your butter and then grate it. You want the butter evenly distributed among the dry ingredients, and grating it gets the butter pieces small enough so you can spend less time handing it. And the less you handle your dough, the less likely you are to overwork it. Pockets of steam are created as the biscuits bake and the cold butter melts, adding flaky layers and lightness to the final product.

Stick to real buttermilk.There are many suggestions for buttermilk substitutes on other sites, but we believe that the characteristics of cultured buttermilk make it the appropriate ingredient for the job. Buttermilk isn't just liquid dairy with a tart flavor—its viscosity is also key to keeping your batter thick, resulting in biscuits that are nice and tall.

Additionally, buttermilk is acidic, with a low pH of 4.4–4.8, which gives it its signature sour flavor. That acidity makes it an excellent tenderizer—not just for fried chicken, but for biscuits as well. It breaks down gluten strands in the dough, resulting in biscuits that are tender rather than tough. (Read more about why you should think twice about substituting for buttermilk from Serious Eats editor emeritus Stella's article about buttermilk.)

Don’t forget to preheat your pan. For these biscuits, we recommend using a pan made from heavy gauge uncoated aluminum or aluminized steel. They conduct heat evenly, promote even browning across the top, and will release your biscuits once they're cool. (If you're looking for the right one, check out our test of the best baking pans.)

When you heat the pan it’ll be with half the butter for the entire recipe, which will seem like a lot, but it's what helps your biscuits swim. The bubbling butter will almost fry your biscuits as they bake. After your biscuits emerge from the oven and start to cool, the biscuits will suck up all that extra butter, and you will be left with biscuits so buttery and light, they’ll melt in your mouth.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat the oven to 450°F (230ºC).

Using the large holes of a box grater, grate 1 stick frozen butter. In a medium bowl, toss together grated butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until butter is thoroughly coated in flour mixture. Chill, uncovered, in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Add remaining butter to an 8-inch square aluminum baking pan. Place in preheated oven until melted, about 4 minutes.

Meanwhile: Using a flexible rubber spatula, stir buttermilk into the flour mixture until just combined (dough will be very sticky).

Remove pan from oven. Carefully scrape dough into the prepared pan, and, using the same spatula, spread dough to the edges. Use a butter knife to cut the dough all the way through into 9 equal squares. Sprinkle flaky sea salt on top.

Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 22 to 24 minutes. Let the biscuits cool slightly in the baking pan before serving, about 5 minutes.

Special Equipment

8-inch square aluminum baking pan

Make Ahead and Storage 

Store in an airtight container or resealable plastic bag for up to 2 days. To reheat, warm in a 350°F oven until heated through, about 5 to 7 minutes.