Growing up out West, Southern cuisine was a relatively foreign thing to me. I once did a cooking project in a high school class that involved grits – and that was about the extent of my knowledge.
So while living in the (arguably) quasi-Southern city of Washington, DC over the last 15 years, and through subsequent travels throughout the Southern states, I’ve had the opportunity to experience some Southern cooking. And some of my most memorable encounters have involved ham biscuits and bacon biscuits.
For those of you who don’t know, the ham biscuits is a very simple but incredibly delicious concept. It’s basically just a buttery biscuit with some form of ham tucked inside. Sometimes it’s just a lovely piece of smoked, cooked ham, and other times it’s a buttery ham mixture. But regardless of the approach, the outcome is always a delicious sweet, buttery, salty treat that is great anytime of day.
The bacon biscuit is basically the same thing as a ham biscuit, but with bacon (of course). So last night I decided to experiment and make my own variation on the bacon biscuit.
To keep things simple, I bought some pre-made biscuit dough. Pillsbury makes a respectable buttermilk biscuit dough, so in most cases it will do. For the bacon, I used wild boar bacon since I was also cooking some for my bacon tater tots.
First, I fried the bacon crisp. I would say that about three pieces of bacon are needed for each biscuit, but wild boar bacon strips are smaller so if you are using regular sized bacon, two strips would probably do. Once the bacon is done cooking and the fat has been drained from the strips, crumble half of the pieces into bits and then break the other pieces into 1-2 inch strips. Spread the biscuits out on a cookie sheet and knead the bacon bits into the dough, reshaping the biscuits to their original shape. Put them in the oven and cook them according to the instructions on the biscuit package, which will probably be about 15 minutes at 350 degrees.
Once the biscuits are done, remove them from the oven, cut them in half, and slide a couple strips of bacon inside. And that’s it – now you have a delicious treat! These would also be good with some eggs and cheese tucked inside the biscuit with the bacon strips to make a breakfast sandwich.
Enjoy!