Skillet Biscuits at Camp
Hand-torn biscuit dough baked in a covered dutch oven over coals. No cutter, no fridge, no buttermilk.
- calories
- 230
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 105
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- 240 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 3 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Baking powder | 4 tsp | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Shelf-stable lard or shortening | 1 cup | stays solid in the pack; butter does not work here |
| Buttermilk powder | 1/4 cup | reconstitutes with cold water, no cooler needed |
| Cold water | 1 cup, or as needed |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down. You want a bed of coals, not flames.
- Grease the dutch oven and its lid. Set it near the fire to warm.
- Cut or rub the lard into the premixed dry ingredients until the flour looks like coarse gravel. Stop there. Overworking it makes bricks.
- Add cold water a splash at a time, stirring, until a shaggy ball comes together. The dough should look crumbly, not smooth.
- Tear off pieces the size of your fist and shape them by hand. Uneven and craggy is correct. Set them in the oven close but not touching.
- Lid on. Bake with coals underneath and more on top, about 20 minutes, until the tops are pale gold and the bottoms sound hollow.
- Check at 15. Rotate the oven a third turn and the lid the other way if one side is running hot.
The original is an oven recipe with chilled lard and fresh buttermilk. Neither survives a cooler-free trip, so the buttermilk becomes powder mixed into the dry blend and the lard becomes any shelf-stable solid fat. Lard is not sentimentality here: it stays solid longer than butter in warm hands and leaves the crust crisp rather than soft. Butter is mostly water, and that water steams the outside soft.
The dough is supposed to feel wrong. It should be crumbly and barely held together, and the biscuits get torn and shaped by hand rather than cut, which is where the ragged crust comes from. Coals go on the lid as well as underneath, because a dutch oven heated only from below burns the bottoms before the tops set.
Packing
Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, soda, and buttermilk powder together at home and carry it in one bag. Lard rides in a screw-top jar, taped shut.
Variations
- Stir in a handful of freeze-dried chives and a shake of black pepper.
- Leftover biscuits split and griddled the next morning hold butter and jam well.
- Molasses or sorghum syrup carried in a small bottle is the traditional pour.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/cathead-biscuits