In our house, we like us some good biscuits. These are some good biscuits.
And they’re good biscuits without most of the typical things that make good biscuits good biscuits.
This biscuit recipe takes out the butter, plummets the fat and calories, and makes something that is generally super bad for you almost okay for you.
This version does still use white flour, but we’ve cleaned it up enough that we feel a little better about the indulgence.
The Eliminations
The eliminations from these biscuits are designed to make them ultra low-fat.
Compared to other biscuit recipes, here’s what we have taken out of our You’ll Think They’re Buttermilk Biscuits entirely:
- ½ the fat
- Sugar
The Swaps
Compared to other biscuit recipes, here’s what we’ve swapped in our You’ll Think They’re Buttermilk Biscuits:
With these substitutions, we’ve eliminated a load of fat (especially saturated fat), a few extra calories, and doubled the protein.
Greek-style yogurt replaces more than one ingredient typically found in a traditional biscuit recipe – the buttermilk and half of the butter.
The most important substitution/reduction is the butter.
If you would rather keep the buttermilk, you can use ½ cup of buttermilk instead of the ½ cup of Greek-style yogurt and apple cider vinegar and still substitute 2 tbsp of avocado oil and 1 ½ tbsp of Greek-style yogurt for the butter.
How long do these biscuits take?
Us: 20 minutes (10 minutes prep, 10 minutes cook time)
Faster Food Preppers: 15 minutes (5 minutes prep, 10 minutes cook time)
What’s the flavor like?
Spot-on.
Shawna grew up in The South and LOVES biscuits. Like loves loves them. They’re one of her favorite food groups.
She said it best when she declared, “If you gave this to someone who loves buttermilk biscuits like me, and they didn’t know what was in them, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
We firmly believe that.
We’ll even go so far as to say the reduction in fat makes these biscuits reheat better than traditional biscuits.
Bold claim, we know.
The flavor of these biscuits is heavily dependent on the yogurt you use, though, and some Greek and Greek-style yogurts definitely taste better than others.
We use Wallaby Organic Greek-style non-fat plain yogurt as our go-to yogurt, and highly recommend it for this recipe in particular.
What’s the texture like?
Standard biscuit texture.
Crusty on the outside, soft and airy on the inside.
What can go wrong?
Nothing that we know of. These biscuits are incredibly simple to make.
But here are a few things to keep in mind before you get started:
Give the yogurt and apple cider vinegar enough time to sit.
The yogurt/apple cider vinegar combo in this recipe replaces the buttermilk.
While yogurt alone has a similar acid content to buttermilk and can replace buttermilk on its own, we find the uptick in acid really helps these biscuits fluff.
It also helps give them that hallmark tang you expect of a buttermilk biscuit.
Use non-virgin avocado oil.
Virgin and extra-virgin avocado oils might be better for you, but they will give these biscuits a bite-y flavor you probably don’t want in your biscuit (we certainly didn’t want it).
To maintain these biscuits’ neutral biscuit taste, stick with a mild, non-virgin avocado oil.
Use a light-colored pan.
If anything does go wrong during baking, it will likely be your biscuit bottoms getting too done before they fully cook.
If you find yourself with overly-brown bottoms, try a lighter-colored pan before adjusting the baking temperature lower.
The Recipe
You'll Think They're Buttermilk Biscuits
A low-fat buttermilk biscuit replacement recipe.
Ingredients
- ½ c + 1½ tbsp Greek or Greek-style yogurt (fat-free)
- ½ tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 c all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp avocado oil
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Combine yogurt and apple cider vinegar in a bowl with a silicon spatula or wooden spoon and set it aside. Let sit at least five minutes.
3. Sift or fork one cup of all-purpose flour into a medium-sized mixing bowl.
4. Add baking powder, baking soda and salt to flour and mix well.
5. Add avocado oil to the yogurt-apple cider vinegar combo and mix carefully with a fork or whisk. They will want to stay separated, but will eventually fully combine.
6. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the yogurt mixture into it. Gently fold the flour into the wet ingredients as much as possible with a silicon spatula or wooden spoon.
7. Use your hands to turn the dough ball and pick up the flour left in the bottom of the bowl, working it gently into the dough ball. (Two or three very light kneads won't hurt it.)
8. Spoon or spatula the dough into a ¼-c measuring cup to measure out your biscuits and drop onto the baking sheet (we use parchment paper). Fill the cup to a little below full to get six biscuits from this recipe.
9. Bake for 10 minutes.
10. Move biscuits from the baking sheet to a rack immediately when done.
Notes
When you finish incorporating all flour, the dough for these biscuits should be slightly sticky, but will easily come off the hands or out of a measuring cup.
Nutritional Information
The nutritional information for our biscuits is based on six biscuits to the recipe.
Why our You’ll Think They’re Buttermilk Biscuits?
When directly compared, buttermilk and non-fat/low-fat yogurt have a lot of the same benefits.
They are both low in calories (buttermilk is a little lower), low-fat (when using low-fat or non-fat yogurt), and offer good doses of your daily calcium, as well as numerous other vitamins and minerals.
What gives these Greek-style yogurt biscuits an edge (for us) is that they serve up twice the protein and contain considerably more of those tougher to get B vitamins.
They’re also straight-up delicious, which certainly doesn’t hurt matters any.