The easiest from-scratch biscuits you will ever make

Emeril's Cheddar and Green Onion Biscuits with bacon. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Biscuit making is one of those revered arts, right up there with pie-crust-making, that holds fear and anxiety in its elusive and sticky hands. The fact is, both of these pastry skills were essential and probably inconsequentially everyday for women a century ago, but now that the kitchen is a choice, and thank goodness for that, biscuit making manages to be terrifying even though it is actually a very simple process. Fat combined with flour, some salt, some leavening, bound with liquid, pressed into a disk, punched into shape and baked.

The problem, of course, presents itself in the choices - what fat, what flour, what leavening? The novice cook may wonder 'What does it mean to "handle gently?" or to "cut in butter?" Given the variations and complexities of the subject, it's no wonder that people will pop open a tube of biscuits and call it breakfast. (Or for the moms in the know, bake up the frozen biscuits, because, I know, they really are that good.)

When you're ready to give biscuit-making a try, go to this recipe from "Emeril's Kicked-Up Sandwiches" for Cheddar-Green Onion Biscuits. It's the delivery device for a fried chicken breast and a shmear of redeye gravy, but bake up a batch of these and they're pretty darn good solo. Plus, this cream biscuit is near foolproof. Even if you manage to overwork the dough, (and if you follow the directions, you won't,) but if you do, there's enough fat to make up for it. Between the butter and the cream, you are covered.

Cheese and onion go into the dry ingredients. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Cutting out biscuits. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

"Painting" the biscuits with what else? Melted butter. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This post is part of #SeriousSandwich, a blogalong for Emeril Lagasse's newest cookbook, "Emeril's Kicked-Up Sandwiches." Look for more recipes from the #SeriousSandwich bloggers by following hashtag #SeriousSandwich on Twitter.

Text and images copyright 2012, Lucy Mercer.

Emeril’s Kicked-Up Sandwiches (Morrow, $24.99)

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