I Heart Hardee’s Biscuits

Just because Valentine’s Day is over doesn’t mean you have to put away the heart-shaped baking pans and cookie cutters. To keep the love alive, I’m making heart-shaped Hardee’s biscuits in this episode of Girl Meets Oven.

The Story

If you don’t know about Hardee’s, let me tell you about it! It’s a hamburger chain famous for its biscuits. McDonald’s may have great fries, and Burger King may be the “king” of char-broiled burgers, but Hardee’s makes the best biscuits.

Ken and I did some time as teenagers working at fast-food hamburger joints to earn a little extra cash. Ken worked at Burger King, so he is master of the grill at our house. I worked at McDonald’s, so I know how to avoid fry burns. (Here’s a tip: Don’t fry your fries; bake them. I haven’t fried fries since my days at McDonald’s mostly because of my traumatic experience with grease burns from the fryer.)

Yet neither of us can make Hardee’s biscuits. Oh how I heart those Hardee’s biscuits. Since neither of us worked at Hardee’s, we had no way to get the secret recipe. Then my mother-in-law, who also worked a stint as crew chief at Burger King, took matters into her own hands. She figured out the secret ingredients on her own by just experimenting. The recipe I’m about to share is the culmination of her research.

The Moral of the Story

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Fortunately, I lived through working at McDonald’s. As a result, I can now hold my own against a deep fryer or sizzling grill. But I definitely prefer baking to frying or grilling anything.

About the Recipe

There are many different Hardee’s biscuit recipes online. I’ve included a few at the end of this post if you want to try others. For this demonstration, I’ll be sticking with my mother-in-law’s version of this recipe.

The Cast of Characters

A five-member crew makes this recipe possible: self-rising flour, sugar, baking soda, butter and buttermilk.

The Play-by-Play

Before you begin, preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and grease a baking sheet with shortening.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour and sugar.

With a pastry cutter or fork, blend the butter into the flour and sugar.

In a small bowl or mixing cup, stir together baking soda and buttermilk.

Add the baking soda and buttermilk mixture to the flour and sugar, and mix lightly.

Place dough on lightly floured surface. With a rolling pin, roll the dough to about 1 ½ to 2 inches thick.

Cut the dough with a 2-inch biscuit cutter (preferably a heart-shaped one if you have one).

Place the biscuits onto the baking sheet, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

The Footnotes

• Mixing the dough: Cut the butter into small pieces before mixing into the flour and sugar. This will help prevent over mixing the dough with the pastry cutter. If you over mix the biscuit batter, supposedly you will have flatter biscuits. I still haven’t conquered making tall biscuits. I took a cooking class once where we split into two teams to make two batches of biscuits. My team’s biscuits were not the tallest in the class, but they were still tasty.
• Cutting the biscuits: I recall Alton Brown once mentioning to push the biscuit cutter straight down when cutting your biscuits. He warned not to twist the cutter while cutting the biscuit. Supposedly cutting them this way helps the biscuits to rise better. I’m not sure though. I used the “straight cut” method for the heart-shaped Hardee’s biscuits, and they still didn’t seem all that tall.
• Measuring your ingredients: This is the most important tip. When I first received my mother-in-law’s recipe, I didn’t realize there was a typo in the ingredient proportions. I thought it was strange it called for 1/4 cup of baking soda. I thought surely that will make my biscuits taller this time. I was wrong. She meant to write 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. If you use 1/4 cup baking soda your biscuits will definitely be taller, but no one will want to eat them. Ken wouldn’t even let me feed them to the dog when I made them this way. It’s definitely better with 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

Additional Resources

If you’d like to experiment with other Hardee’s biscuits recipes, give these a try:

• Hardee’s Biscuits from Cooks.com: This website has over a dozen different variations on the Hardee’s biscuit recipe. This particular one is similar to my mother-in-law’s, but uses shortening instead of butter.
• Hardee’s Biscuits from Food.com: This variation also uses shortening instead of butter.
• Copycat Hardee’s Biscuits from The Secret Recipe Blog: This one uses mayonnaise. How strange!

The Recipe: Homemade Hardee’s Biscuits

Baking Time: 10-12 minutes

Servings: About 10 biscuits

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups self-rising flour
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup unsalted butter
¾ cup buttermilk

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Grease a baking sheet with shortening.
3. In a large bowl, sift together the flour and sugar.
4. With a pastry cutter or fork, blend the butter into the flour and sugar.
5. In a small bowl, stir together the baking soda and buttermilk.
6. Add the baking soda and buttermilk mixture to the flour and sugar, and mix lightly.
7. Place dough on lightly floured surface. With a rolling pin, roll the dough to about 1 ½ to 2 inches thick.
8. Cut the dough with a 2-inch biscuit cutter.
9. Place the biscuits onto the baking sheet, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

What’s your favorite biscuit recipe?