Let's be honest with each other. A lot of us don't go to Red Lobster for the seafood. We go for the biscuits, and then we order seafood as a formality while we wait for more biscuits. After years of doing this, I finally sat down and built my own homemade version, warm, garlicky, cheesy, and brushed with that herby butter that makes the whole kitchen smell incredible. This isn't an exact copy, since the real thing is a closely guarded recipe, but it's a genuinely delicious homemade tribute that gets you 90% of the way there without leaving your house.
Makes: about 12 biscuits
Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 12-15 minutes
Ingredients
For the biscuits:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 1 1/4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup cold buttermilk
For the garlic herb butter topping:
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
- A pinch of salt
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 425°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, garlic powder, and salt.
Add the cold, cubed butter to the flour mixture. Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, work the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with some pea sized pieces of butter still visible. Keeping the butter cold is the real key to flaky biscuits, so don't let it get too soft while you're working.
Stir in the shredded cheddar cheese until it's evenly distributed through the flour mixture.
Pour in the cold buttermilk and stir gently, just until the dough comes together. Don't overmix, a slightly shaggy, uneven dough is exactly what you want here. Drop rounded spoonfuls of dough (about 1/4 cup each) onto your prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. While the biscuits bake, stir together the melted butter, garlic powder, dried parsley, and a pinch of salt for the topping.
As soon as the biscuits come out of the oven, brush the garlic herb butter generously over the top of each one while they're still hot, so it soaks in. Serve warm.
A Few Tips From Trial and Error
- Cold butter and cold buttermilk really do matter. Warm ingredients make for dense, flat biscuits instead of light, tender ones.
- Don't skip the butter brush at the end. That's genuinely half of what makes these taste like the restaurant version.
- Sharp cheddar brings a lot more flavor than mild cheddar, so it's worth the slightly stronger cheese here.
- These are best eaten the day they're made, but leftover biscuits reheat nicely in a warm oven for a few minutes.
These won't fool a Red Lobster server into thinking you smuggled some out in your purse, but they get remarkably close, and you get to eat them fresh out of your own oven, in your own kitchen, without waiting for a table. Consider this your permission slip to make an entire batch just for yourself on a random Tuesday night.
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