Regina’s Butter Biscuits Recipe (2025)

To the lady who posted this recipe...How can you misrepresent it so with the picture chosen to accompany the recipe? I watched Regina make these on a vid and they were normal biscuit sized, not these towering things. I want the recipe for the towering biscuits please.

Regina Charboneau, the creator of these biscuits, really recommends that you make these biscuits with the butter and the margarine. She says that without the margarine, the butter weighs the dough down, resulting in a shortbread-like texture. Kim Severson swears that these biscuits are the lightest and flakiest she's ever had.

Is it necessary to post what you will or will not do with certain ingredients? This is a forum to post helpful comments. So testing and adapting a recipe not a consideration? This is basically a pâte feuilletée, which is usually made using 100% butter. So try a recipe first, as offered, then make changes. Or try something new: read and research similar recipes. Note what is held in common. Experiment! No need to throw down the gauntlet in defiance of margarine, or calories.

margarine is still a thing?

There's a noticeable thread here: margarine. Could Kim Severson explain what its function is? Like ten below, I wonder whether lard would be a good substitute, but it's an expensive experiment so a little guidance would be great.

I have made these for holidays for the past two years. My family will have no other biscuit and negotiate for the last one remaining. They are a bit time consuming compared to most other biscuits. The fact that they must be frozen, requires that they be made in advance but makes the day of eating so easy. I do cut the margarine in half, but otherwise follow the recipe exactly. The finished biscuits look exactly like the photo using a 2" cutter. The marmalade is divine.

The Finest Southern Biscuits Ever! Please use Land O' Lakes Margarine if you can find it. Regina spilled this recipe and I will never let go. First enjoyed her biscuits at Regina's in San Francisco. Freak out if you must over some other indulgence but the biscuits are worthy a special occasion.

These were great right out of the oven but let them rest and the margarine makes a heavy bottom. I thought I would cook the rest i had in the freezer on a rack over a cookie sheet. the margarine that dripped out of them was horrifying and the cooked product, drained of all that fat was truly amazing.

I have great respect for Regina who has made a big mark with these biscuits. So I saw no reason to change her recipe. I use a lot of butter in my cooking, but had never bought margarine in my life before. I did it exactly as she did in her video on P Allen Smith, including her compound butter. They were absolutely delicious and flakey. I now keep the frozen uncooked biscuits for quick bonuses for my meals. Since I only restrict carbohydrates, and not fats or proteins, they are a treat!

Hi. I wondered this myself. It (now?) says at the top: 3 dozen 2-inch biscuits.
But I'll never make them. I won't use this amount of margarine in anything.

First time was best. I used a 2" can to cut them. Regular cutter is 2.25"-- makes a big difference. Now I use the larger cutter and they don't rise as well. Also cook them longer than instructed: until they smell done, thirty to forty minutes.

The recipe calls for baking powder, not soda.

Making these biscuits look like the photo is so easy. Butter and margarine iced cold. Cut them 1 1/2 thick as directed. Don't twist. Keep ice cold everything. Don't freeze, but if you do, let them thaw a tad longer. Then do not put in muffin pan as directed. Place on parchment lined cookie sheet. One has only you look at the biscuits baked in the muffin tin to see that the heat of the muffin cup seals the side of the biscuit preventing rising.

the sugar is to counteract the bitterness of the baking powder

I made exactly as written after buying margarine for the first time in my life and WOW. Actually quite easy and the results were fantastic. Light, flaky, tall and buttery. I did go thru by hand and ensure that the butter and margarine had been reduced to manageable chunks before I began folding, turning and rolling. I did that quite a few times and the technique, like with puff pastry, made the layers just grow. Finally, they did need to cook longer; about 45 minutes.

Researching biscuit recipes: a general question about these types of biscuits:It occurs to me that I’d want to eat these hot, fluffy babies right out of the oven, i.e., I wouldn’t want to prepare them, bake them, put them in a warm towel in basket and drive half and hour to someone’s house and serve them an hour later when we all get around to dinner. In other words these are to be made at home and served directly out of the oven. Yes?

I have always used lard when making biscuits. I am a bona fide Southerner

Friends and family consider me to be a pretty good baker but I cannot make a proper biscuit. If I were given an ultimatum - make a decent biscuit or die - you might as well just order the tombstone. Nonetheless, I try new biscuit recipes a couple of times a year, usually whenever I see buttermilk on sale. That seems to inspire me. I would love to try one of these biscuits made by someone who has the knowhow. Meanwhile, we can add this recipe to the long list in my obituary.

RE the margarine. Try vegetable shortening (Crisco) instead. This is what cooks in eastern KY use for biscuits.

Sorry, these biscuits aren't great. I have a rotating repertoire of about five biscuits recipes that I use depending on the dish. And these won't be added to that. They were flat, greasy, no flavor, just a dissapointing venture all together. And I have no qualms with margarine as someone who makes lard biscuits without hesitation.

I agree with comments noting that a splurge is a splurge. I have no problem with a delicious calorie-laden treat on occasion. No one is making these every day. That said, I don't know why anyone would make these at all. They're incredibly time consuming and they're just OK. The immense effort required is not justified by the result. I love a challenge, and will happily devote an afternoon to a ridiculously complex cooking challenge. I won't do this one again!

Kind of greasy and didn’t look as tall as the picture but my family liked them

I used all butter and bumped the temperature to 400 degrees F for an additional 5 minutes. The few pools of melted butter browned a bit and reabsorbed. Beautiful flaky layers. My biscuits doubled in height, using 3 tsp baking powder and rolling to about 3/4 inch thickness. Didn't take all that much longer than my cream biscuits. Delicious!

No margarine so used half Crisco, half unsalted butter and added a tsp. of salt. Came out so light and flaky. Butter has a lower melting point than margarine/veg. shortening, which is why it's important NOT to substitute all butter (some shortening makes better pie crusts/cookies too). Butter tends to flood out and create heavy, dense pastry. Using some vegetable shortening creates flakes. It's essential the fat be cold/preferably frozen before baking.

Made a half recipe with full butter (you follow?) and they turned out spectacular. Nice tall slinkys, maybe not quite as defined as the ones in the photo, but for a first try, absolutely bomb.

Excellent -- a hit at neighborhood pot luck. However: (1) should have read comments first; can't use spreadable margarine; too liquid. Hard to find margarine in stick form. Made again with sticks. Better. (2) too sweet with the amount of sugar in the recipe. With no sugar, the bitterness of the baking powder comes through. Next time I'll try with some sugar but not this much. (3) Took more like 40 min to bake.

Before Biscuits & Blues, Regina Charboneau had the eponymous-named restaurant, Regina’s, in San Francisco’s theater district. I remember her biscuits more than 30 years later. They are that good! Five stars from me.

I only wish I had been able to find real margarine without traveling 20 miles. I tried to substitute with a mix of Crisco and butter after reading the notes about the issue of water content in most margarines made today. I unfortunately had the same experience as others with the spreading of the biscuit; they were tasty though but would have done better in muffin tins rather than on a cookie sheet where they spread.

I used all butter, mixed it in bread machine which blended butter in. Rich and good.

So wait do I need to bake these in a muffin tin?