Beaver Fat Biscuits

I don’t know of too many other foods that have as much mystery wrapped around them as biscuits do. Making good biscuits seems like some sort of black magic- you either know how to do it, or you don’t, and good luck finding someone to initiate you into the cult. In the past, we rarely made biscuits, but our recent experiments with using different wild fats led us to give them another try.

We did more trapping this season than we ever have before, and wound up with 6 beavers. After butchering them, we saved all the beautiful white fat and rendered it down. We wound up with around 3 quarts of beaver lard in the end. The fat is clean and mild-flavored, and still just a tiny bit soft even straight from the fridge. It reminds us mostly of pork fat, but maybe a little softer. We thought it would be a great substitute for butter.

These wound up being so easy to make, and delicious on top of it. Everyone who makes biscuits says it- the key is to get your fat cold, and work it into the flour quickly so it doesn’t melt. We also rolled out and folded the dough a few times to create layered, flakey biscuits. Because we used the beaver fat instead of butter in this recipe, they don’t have an overpowering buttery flavor, but they do retain the richness of a traditional biscuit. We topped ours with some homemade blackberry jam, but these would be just as much at home nestled on a plate with sausage and eggs.

Beaver Fat Biscuit Recipe

Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

6 tbsp beaver fat (chilled)

¾ cup whole milk

Method:

Preheat the oven to 425F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, mix well.

Add chilled beaver fat, working it into the flour mix with a fork. Work quickly to break up the fat into pieces- you want it to look kind of gravelly and crumbly. These chunks of fat will help create the layers in the biscuits later.

Add in milk and mix until just combined. Add small amounts of flour if the dough is too sticky.

Work the dough on a lightly floured surface for 1-2 minutes, folding over and rolling out 4-6 times.

Roll to 1” thick  and punch out with biscuit cutter.

Space ½” apart on pan, brush with butter or beaver fat, and bake for 12-14 minutes until golden brown.