WEEK 17: Biscuits + Groovy

In a world where you can Google anything, you might come across some winning searches like how can I grow taller? How can I be happy? And--- how can I be cool?

And while we don’t know a scientifically proven secret to growing taller (though, we might suggest moving to Texas because everything’s bigger in Texas), we can give you a direction that may just answer all of your questions and more. Now introducing the biscuit of Texas, Biscuits + Groovy.

We were lucky enough to speak with the creator and owner of Biscuits + Groovy, Jon Lach, and ask about the food trucks origins.

“Biscuits + Groovy started in 2010 in Austin, TX. Back then, we only had the original Biscuits + Groovy plus several lunch and dinner options, but had to cut our menu back drastically to accommodate how busy we were with such little room inside of the trailer. We now offer buttermilk biscuits or vegan biscuits, topped with gravy and all sorts of topping options, with a disco theme. We have a very wide selection of flavored biscuits that we offer for catering - garlic cheddar, jalapeno cheddar, honey butter, sweet potato, etc.”

We also learned from some locals that the easiest way to find this dream fulfilling food truck is to follow the line. Once you hop aboard the gravy train and ride it all the way to the front you can make your choice from the perfectly curated and thought out biscuit menu.

As you might have picked up from the name, the menu pays homage to 70s-era music icons: The Aretha Franklin featuring three freshly baked buttermilk biscuits smothered in white pepper gravy topped with sausage and chives and accompanied by thick cut peppered maple bacon and Colby jack cheese. There’s also the Johnny Hash paying homage to the Man in Black and of course potatoes with biscuits, gravy, potatoes, thick sliced peppered maple bacon, sausage and Colby jack cheese. The rest of the menu items and names are as thematic and will make you ecstatic. And if that doesn’t do it for you, have we mentioned that everything at the food truck can be veganized? Biscuits + Groovy takes this seriously, they even color code their equipment to keep the vegan options separate from the regular. Now that’s some southern hospitality.

And here we come to how do you become cool? Jon gave us a lesson on just how early the biscuits started their lives as Texas’s best biscuits. This is what makes their biscuits so cool.

“Aside from the fact that our biscuits are subjected to 70s tunes from their early stages as flour, butter and buttermilk until they enter the mouths of our customers later in the day, the way we put our dishes together is a quite different than most other biscuit places. We layer the toppings atop the gravy, versus the traditional biscuit sandwich approach.”

That’s right, this biscuit vehicle uses their biscuits as vehicles to carry high quality and delicious ingredients from their kitchen to your mouth.

This brings us to another very important question to answer, how can you be happy?

Well, for starters you can make your way to Austin, Texas and eat one of these groovy biscuits. However, we understand that this may not be possible for everyone, and we do want everyone to be happy after all. So, we have, for your viewing and tasting pleasure, the Biscuits + Groovy biscuit process.

“We use high quality ingredients, such as very low protein flour (lower protein == lower gluten == less hard biscuits). Our biscuits are made in the traditional way - mix dry ingredients, add fat (butter), add buttermilk, very gently incorporate the milk into the flour, gently knead the dough, flatten and cut, refrigerate again to keep everything super cold (it gets incredibly hot in a tin can trailer in Texas), then bake at a high temperature until super fluffy and golden brown. We place ours on the pan touching so they have soft sides.  Serve hot! We bake our biscuits pretty much non stop the entire time we're open, so just about everyone gets a fresh from the oven biscuit. They're the best that way.”

Oh, and did we mention we also have the recipe to their Bourbon Biscuit Bread Pudding!?

INGREDIENTS

·       1 cup raisins

·       3 tablespoons bourbon

·       12 day-old biscuits

·       1 quart whole milk

·       2 tablespoons melted butter

·       6 large eggs

·       2 cups sugar

·       2 tablespoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Special equipment: 8 mini loaf pans
Stir together the raisins and bourbon in a medium bowl. Let soak at room temperature for 6 hours. 
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Crumble the biscuits into large pieces in a large bowl. Add the milk and let soak for 5 minutes. 
Grease 8 mini loaf pans with the melted butter. Add the eggs, sugar and vanilla to the bowl with the bourbon raisins, then add to the biscuit mixture. Stir until just combined and pour into the prepared pans. Bake until set, about 1 hour. Serve warm. 

So, here you are, happy with your biscuit and Bourbon Biscuit Bread Pudding, you’re growing taller every day with the HUGE serving sizes, and you just can’t look any cooler sitting at one of their red and yellow picnic tables enjoying your beautiful biscuit. You can even bring the grooviness home with you by bringing in your own mix tape CD and swapping it in for a new one from another cool customer. And now we have taught you all of the secrets of biscuits of Texas. The only thing you have to do is get on your way to Austin, Texas. Googling pictures is just not as satisfying. Trust us.