TikTok Swears By This Homemade Copycat Of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits
Each QSR (quick-serve restaurant) is known for having the best of a particular dish; let's call it their "signature dish." For McDonald's, it's their French fries, arguably the best French fries served by any fast food establishment. Does anyone go there after breakfast without driving away and eating fries on their lap directly from the bag? Burger King has its Whopper, Olive Garden has its never-ending soup and breadsticks, and Chik-fil-A has, well, chicken. At Red Lobster, the customers come back time and time again for its Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
Considered the best thing on the menu by Red Lobster customers, the Cheddar Bay Biscuits are loaded with sharp cheddar cheese and brushed with finger-licking garlic butter. Unlike the uniform, smooth-looking rolled and cut buttermilk biscuits of the South, Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits are a drop-style biscuit loved by novice bakers for their easy-to-follow recipes. Red Lobster serves two Cheddar Bay Biscuits with every entree, but customers can order more by the dozen, and they do. The nautical-themed restaurant has been serving its iconic biscuits since 1992, when they were called "freshly baked, hot cheese garlic bread" and given for free to hungry guests waiting to be seated.
While the chain sells a packaged Cheddar Bay Biscuits mix at their restaurants and online through various retailers like Amazon for $2.58, requiring home cooks to add cheddar cheese, water, and butter to the dry ingredients, this copycat recipe lets you whip up as many biscuits as your heart desires.
Homemade Cheddar Bay Biscuits
Biscuits are a popular side dish for the QSR market. Cracker Barrell sells 825,000 buttermilk biscuits per day, second only to Red Lobster, who freshly bakes nearly one million Cheddar Bay Biscuits daily in its 700 restaurants nationally. While the buttery biscuits are worth a trip to Red Lobster, you can make the baked good at home anytime.
This copycat recipe via TikTok combines all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, onion powder, and garlic powder with a stick of cold unsalted butter until the mixture resembles wet sand with pea-sized butter pieces throughout. Sharp cheddar cheese, fresh parsley, and buttermilk are added and stirred until a moist, shaggy dough forms. The tacky dough is spooned into wet mounds on a greased baking sheet and baked until golden brown. Before serving, the biscuits are brushed with a garlic, parsley, and melted butter mixture.
The biscuits are baked in under 15 minutes, meaning you can have them on the table within 20. The biscuits will stay fresh for a few days in the refrigerator or freeze for up to a month. Some recipes simplify the copycat Cheddar Bay Biscuit ingredients even further, using prepackaged pancake mix like Bisquick, replacing the all-purpose flour, salt, and baking soda in the recipe.