5 Country Cooking Secrets from Cracker Barrel

Hashbrown Casserole

This is the restaurant's most popular side—and now it can be your family's favorite at home: Use colby cheese, instead of cheddar, in your hashbrown casserole, which one former Cracker Barrel employee says more closely mimics the actual recipe. Combine all of the ingredients the day before (taking the potatoes straight from the freezer, instead of letting them thaw), then cover and refrigerate the uncooked casserole over night. Finally, use a large spoon to place dollops of the mixture into a greased pan, rather than patting it down firmly with your hand. 

Want a recipe? The person who submitted this one claims her parents acquired it while working on a Cracker Barrel training video. Worth a try, right? 

Biscuits
One Cracker Barrel cook says the secret to the pillowy little biscuits is simplicity: White Lily self-rising flour (2 cups), buttermilk (2/3 cup), shortening (1/3 cup), and nothing more. Combine the flour and shortening, add the buttermilk, and mix for one minute; roll 'em out, cut 'em into circles, and bake for  8 minutes at 450° F. While they're hot, brush your biscuits with melted butter. An awesome quote from the Cracker Barrel employee who leaked this recipe: "That's how I do it, and cannot say if that's how I also do it at work." Sounds like a guilty conscience to me. 

Meatloaf
Instead of using standard breadcrumbs in your meatloaf, crumble up homemade buttermilk biscuits, which employees say is the key to a Cracker Barrel-like loaf. 

Fried Apples
You'll find bacon drippings in most copycat recipes for Cracker Barrel's fried apples, but at least one employee says that addition isn't actually a part of the recipe. 

Pancakes
The pancake mix for sale in the country store is likely the same stuff used in the kitchen: One former worker says the chefs just use a mix (which has an unusual ingredient: rye flour), to which they add water, wait 10 minutes for the batter to rise, and then whisk until smooth. The ideal temperature for your griddle: 400° F

Court Cafe Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

The perfect biscuit: crispy outside, pillowy inside.

In the South, where I grew up, buttermilk biscuits signify something much deeper than the start of a hearty meal. They're the symbol of down-home tradition, of a place where dinner doesn't come from a can. The irony is that the only biscuits most people can make are those Pillsbury Flaky canned jobs—a shameful adulteration of the real thing. Mimicking the pillowy perfection of Granny's biscuits is admittedly tough. They're finicky little things, requiring both time-honored technique and a real Southern recipe. And, no, Paula Deen isn't the answer. 

        I learned my technique from Margaret Byrd, who cooked for two decades at a mom-and-pop diner, Court Cafe, in my hometown. The café stood at the tail end of Knoxville's main thoroughfare, Kingston Pike, a stretch of which was once a moonshiners' route. Back in the 1930s, Court Cafe served breakfast and lunch to guests of a nearby motel, long since demolished. Later, it became the morning spot of dozens of locals, my parents included. 

       The cafe was once featured in a documentary about Hank Williams Sr., but it was still best known for its food: sausage gravy, biscuits, chicken and dumplings, all the classics of home cookin'. Then, a few years back, as strip malls sprang up in the area, Court Cafe was forced to suddenly close. And my parents were forced to eat sausage biscuits at Hardee's. An utter tragedy. Fortunately, with the help of Byrd, you'll never reach such a level of biscuit desperation. 

    

The perfect homemade biscuit, she says, starts with soft flour, baking powder, Crisco, and ice-cold buttermilk. It sounds simple, but Byrd swears by it. "You can tell the difference between a homemade and a store-bought biscuit," Byrd told me. "We use White Lily Flour, nothin’ but White Lily Flour, self-rising. Our biscuits are made the old-timey way with buttermilk. We don’t add any water at all. That’s all I have ever seen my Mom do." 

     The recipe is basic, but it's easy to screw up the technique. Working the dough for more than 2 or 3 minutes will make your biscuits tough, as will twisting the biscuit cutter—or in Byrd's mother's kitchen, the round edge of a tin can. 

Court Cafe Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

What you need

2 cups self-rising White Lily flour
¼ cup Crisco (vegetable shortening) 
¾ cold buttermilk
½ Tbsp baking powder
Melted salted butter


Put it all together

1. Preheat the oven to 500°F.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Then using your hands or a pastry blender, gently cut in the vegetable shortening to create a coarse mixture.
3. Stir in the buttermilk, only until a soft dough firms, then turn it onto a lightly floured surface. Knead it for 2 to 3 minutes, no longer. 
4. With a rolling pin, flatten the dough to ½” thickness. Then without twisting, cut out your biscuits. Arrange them on an ungreased baking sheet, with each round barely kissing its neighbor.
5. Bake 10-12 minutes, and immediately after removing, brush the tops with melted butter.