Cowboy Kent Rollins' 2-Ingredient Secret To Making Fluffy Biscuits Without Butter

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Getting perfectly fluffy, buttery biscuits can seem like a difficult endeavor, particularly if it's not something you've grown up with. You want them flaky but substantial. And it can be easy to overbake them. You can use pancake mix to make some pretty tasty biscuits. You can work with canned biscuits to make them taste like homemade. But when you're looking for something purely homemade, what's the easiest path to take? Follow Cowboy Kent Rollins' advice and make homemade biscuits with just two ingredients: self-rising flour and whipping cream.

Kent Rollins began cooking on cattle ranches in 1993, so his 30+ years of experience "cowboy cooking" over an open fire with very few implements comes into play here. He's used to packing in only the essentials. He's used to cooking with just a cast iron pan directly on the coals or Dutch oven suspended over them. But his knowledge of the pure necessities and simple innovation are what took him from feeding the bunkhouse to penning cookbooks.

This recipe is perfectly suited for the suburban chef as much as the cowboy cook. As Rollins explains in his biscuit recipe, "The reason this works so well is that the heavy cream [or whipping cream] contains the milk AND the butter fat that makes biscuits warm and fluffy. By using whipped cream, you eliminate the traditional step of folding cold butter shreds into the dough and adding milk." It's always nice to remove a step or two, but what steps do you need to know?

You can cook these biscuits in a cast iron pan over an open fire or in your oven, but you'll want the heat at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll need about two cups of self-rising flour and a cup and a half of heavy cream. Rollins recommends sifting the flour, which will give you a softer, smoother base in your biscuit dough. Simply stir them together, then knead the dough on a floured surface until it's moist on the inside but not sticky.

They'll probably need about 12 to 15 minutes in the oven. But whether in the oven or over an open fire, just cook until golden brown. Either way, one of Rollins' signature (literally his name is written on it) Mesquite Wood Cast Iron Spatulas makes a nice implement for testing and cutting the biscuits. These biscuits make the perfect receptacle for biscuits and gravy, but are also amazing with a little butter and jam. And if you have leftover biscuits and need to keep them for a trail snack, they'll last a day or two without refrigeration, but will keep in the fridge for at least a week, ready to feed the cowboys and cowgirls at home.