Fast Food Biscuits Ranked From Worst To Best
We like to think of biscuits as carb-filled bliss, the best buttery way to start or end the day, and arguably the finest bread-based eat to come out of the Southern U.S. And, as with many things, they're best when made at home by a mawmaw who goes out of her way to call you sugar. But alas, the world is not perfect, and if you want to enjoy an (allegedly) freshly made biscuit at a reasonable price that didn't just pop out of a Pillsbury can, you have no choice but to turn to fast food.
Don't be scared! Take our hand, because we're going to help you through this by ranking some of the hottest biscuits on the fast food market to help you give your rose to the right buttery bachelor.
Some of these biscuits are sold at their given restaurant from the time its locations open to the time they close, while others only stick around when breakfast is served. No matter when they can be enjoyed, we ranked them all by the same criteria. In order to truly gauge which of these fast food biscuits is the top dog, we judged these Southern-inspired sides ourselves, ranking them based on moistness, buttery flavor, and crispy texture. So throw on your cowboy hat and boots. After buying and then trying biscuits available near us and chowing down practically non-stop from 9:30 a.m. to noon (we were committed, y'all), here's our ranking of some of the best and worst fast food biscuits out there.
6. Burger King
Oh Burger King, what have you done? First things first: Burger King doesn't sell a plain old biscuit by itself. Instead,the fast food chain only serves its biscuits in sandwiches with hunks of meat and cheese. So, we ordered the chain's sausage biscuit, then removed the offending meat to test the biscuit alone. However, even before we tossed away the sausage patty, we approached this taste test with an abundance of prudence and side-eye. That's because, from the get-go, Burger King's biscuit was visibly burnt. In fact, it turned out to taste as overcooked as it looked.
The King's take on this breakfast staple is tougher than leather and horrifically dry. As for the texture, your jaw will grow weak and your stomach weary as your teeth attempt to chew through Burger King's breakfast-only catastrophe. But here's the real tragedy, foodies: although the biscuit's flakiness and moistness levels are low, its flavor is pretty darn good.
Dare we say, if it weren't for how toasted the Burger King's biscuit was, it had the potential to be part of a delicious Southern-style breakfast. But alas, due to being so toasted it felt like a hockey puck, we have to deem Burger King's biscuit not only bad (and not in the cool Michael Jackson way) but the worst fast food biscuit we had the displeasure of eating for this ranking.
5. Wendy's
Wendy's may have a reputation for starting beef with other fast food chain on social media, but we at Mashed have never been fearful of controversy so we'll go ahead and say it: Wendy's claims that its breakfast is worth waking up for, but its buttermilk biscuit makes us wish we'd have stayed in bed.
Wendy's says that its breakfast-only biscuit is different because it's been slathered in honey butter. To be fair, the honey butter is present on this biscuit and does provide a delicious, gooey sweetness — but only when you can find it, given that the stuff is unevenly scattered throughout the biscuit. But even Wendy's savory secret weapon of honey butter cannot hide the quality issues of the biscuit beneath.
We found that this biscuit was also toasted past the point of no return. Those of us with a careful biscuit-tuned eye could tell this before taking the first bite. While the scorch marks here aren't as visible as they were in the Burger King biscuit, the Wendy's version was still slightly too brown on top. This issue also made it a task to bite through the biscuit.
Aside from the butter it's doused in, the biscuit itself had very minimal butter flavor and was disappointingly dry. So while Wendy's take on this classic breakfast bread outranks BK's because it's not as burnt, it also had no flakiness or moisture to speak of. We still recommend that you give Wendy's buttermilk biscuit a hard pass.
4. McDonald's
Oh, Ronald McDonald, it's true that the siren call of your Egg McMuffin is undeniable. But McDonald's, your biscuits simply do not compare to the rest.
Okay, actually McDonald's morning-exclusive biscuit is not that bad. In fact, it's decidedly acceptable. From the get-go, we could tell by the biscuit's color it wasn't horrendously overcooked. When we dove into this carb-rich way to start the day, we found it was very flaky. However, while the McDonald's biscuit had not been broiled to death beneath a fast food heat light, (apparent by its good volume), it's still slightly too toasted. This means that it is still too tough and dry to be a delicious biscuit. Also, its butter flavor is seriously lacking.
If you're in a pinch, a McDonald's biscuit will probably hit your biscuit craving. However, due to its middling moistness, flakiness, and butter levels, it's the type of breakfast that, when asked about how good it was, you'll shrug your shoulders, slightly raise your eyebrows and go, "It was okay." You deserve better than that.
3. KFC
We are now side-stepping away from the breakfast biscuit crew to take our first step into the world of dinnertime biscuits (unless you hanker for a chicken and mashed potato breakfast at 10:30 a.m. Hey, that's a carb and protein-filled meal of champions). The next entry on our list also marks our first bite into a biscuit that actually made us happy to eat it.
A Southern-style breakfast bread (according to KFC, anyway), this famous dinner side from KFC had a reasonably handsome color that only veered ever so slightly into overcooked territory. When we tried it, we found that KFC's take on this Southern carb staple is delightfully toasted with a relatively fluffy center and a slight crunch outside. Although its flavor was not intense, it had just enough buttery tinge to make eating it enjoyable.
However, it's not perfect. We don't care how kindly the colonel looks or how tragic his backstory may be, as his biscuits are still lacking in several essential departments. While this carb-filled delight is fluffier than those that came before it, it's still on the drier and denser side of the biscuit-eating world and cannot hold a candle to our top two fast food biscuit picks.
2. Chick-fil-A
One lone, red-clad cowboy has not been credited enough for its biscuit-making work. That cowboy's name? Chick-fil-A. When we saw this chain's biscuit for the first time, we were immediately taken aback by how beautiful it looked. Chick-fil-A's carb-filled breakfast exclusive is by far the largest and prettiest looking entry on our list, with a gorgeous brown color that just won't stop. According to the chain, its biscuits are not frozen and then warmed up to order but baked on location. Boy howdy, do we believe them.
This biscuit tastes like (and we mean this in the best way possible) freshly-warmed buttermilk batter. In other words, it's a true slice of carb heaven that is tender throughout and has melt-in-your-mouth levels of moisture in the center.
However, it's not undercooked. In fact, this biscuit is masterfully toasted on the sides and top so it has a great balance of toasty and soft textures. But, while the consistency of Chick-fil-A's biscuit is hard to beat, its buttery flavor, though still delicious, is outranked by the buttery bread of one more biscuit-famous chain.
1. Popeyes
"I never would have believed a biscuit would've been able to do that," said Al Copeland Jr., son of Popeyes creator Al Copeland, to InsideHook. His comment was in response to how the chain's iconic biscuit brought the Louisiana-born eatery's sales up by a whopping 25% when it joined the menu. When Popeyes' unprecedented dinner biscuits burst onto the scene, consumers from the North and South started a lifelong buttery love affair with the now iconic side. These biscuits' sheer deliciousness caused them to earn the title of our number one pick for the best fast food biscuit.
Like Chick-fil-A's version of the Southern staple, this biscuit of legend is beautifully moist with a crunchy, toasted exterior that makes every bite a multi-dimensional texture experience. However, although it's not as melt-in-your-mouth tender as the other chain's take on the side, Popeyes' flakier treat was the most intensely butter-flavored biscuit on our list. This famous dinner side is laced with butter from its perfectly toasted top down to its wonderfully browned-to-perfection bottom, giving it non-stop butter action in every bite.
With perfect texture and a flavor that makes us put our cowboy hat over our hearts in respect — oh, Al, we can only shake our heads and say that you should never underestimate the power of a Popeyes biscuit.