Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits

The famous Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits are so much easier to make than you might expect and they taste exactly like the restaurant version (maybe better?!). No rise time, no strange ingredients, just a quick and simple cheddar bay biscuit recipe made with sharp cheddar and garlic butter sauce for ultimate restaurant-quality flavor!

For more restaurant-quality copycat dishes, try these yummy make-at-home versions of these super popular recipes: Churro Toffee (Disneyland Copycat), Knott’s Berry Farm Buttermilk Biscuits, and P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef.

Like many chain restaurants (or any restaurants for that matter), I mostly just looked at them with passive interest on the way to school or the mall or wherever we were going as we drove by. It’s not we couldn’t go to many restaurants it’s just that my mom was such a darn good cook that there was no need to. Well, okay and also my mom had nine kids. NINE. I can barely get my three to all behave at the same time at a restaurant, much less nine. I can’t even imagine the wrangling that would involve. Or how big the check would be! Us kids could EAT. 

Anyway, so I saw restaurants like Red Lobster, Applebees, and TGI Fridays and all other chains of course but I didn’t think too much about them. Until that is, I went. Might have been with a friend or on a date or who knows. But there was always that one item the person I was with said “you MUST try” such and so. 

But boy, try it I did. And once I got a taste of that restaurant specialty, I basically couldn’t stop thinking about it till I got to go again, or until a new food obsession came along. So now and again I like to think back to one of my favorite restaurant menu items and try to recreate it at home in between the other dishes I create. Today I was just feeling the cheddar biscuits because they’re delicious and they go with just about anything! 

Here’s how You Make it 

It’s incredibly easy to make your own Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits right at home, here’s how you do it!

1. Preheat that oven to 450 degrees, then get to stirring together all the goodies so you can bake (and, most importantly, eat!)  this cheddar bay biscuits recipe. 

2. Get out a large bowl and mix together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and spices. Stir in the freshly grated cheddar cheese. 

3. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and butter. Go back to the dry ingredients bowl and make a well in the middle of the flour mixture. Pour the wet ingredients into the well and stir, incorporating all the dry ingredients into the wet until there are no more traces of flour. 

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or use a silpat mat, or grease if you don’t have the other two. Taking an ice cream scoop or a ¼ measuring cup, scoop out the biscuit dough and add to your baking sheet, two inches apart. Use your fingers to shape them into mounds (butter your fingers if the dough is too sticky).

5. Bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes, or until they are done all the way through and start to crisp up at the edges. Stir together melted butter, garlic powder, and parsley and brush this butter mixture over this Red Lobster copycat recipe when they come out of the oven before serving. 

Is it Better to Shred Your Own Cheese?

This probably isn’t the answer you’re looking for, but yes, it is better to shred your own cheese. I know, I know, those bags of cheese are so handy and Tiffany, it’s ALREADY SHREDDED so why suggest one more step of shredding your own cheese for these copycat Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits without Bisquick? 

Well, I’ll give you a few good reasons: 

1. Freshly shredded cheese just tastes better. It’s just cheese, shredded, and not with the cellulose and other ingredients they have to put in those bags of pre-shredded cheese to make sure they don’t stick together and stay fresh and other things you probably don’t want to know about.

2. It feels better too! For the same reasons as above, it feels smoother on both your hands as you grate and in your mouth as you chew because you’re not feeling that extra stuff on the shredded cheese.

3. It cooks better. It will melt right into your biscuits just like God intended and it won’t kind of hang out still in its same bagged, shredded cheese form.

4. It’s cheaper! Just like anything you are tempted to buy pre-cut, -shredded, -washed, -diced, whatever, you’re going to have to pay for it to get like that. Nobody’s shredding your cheese or washing your lettuce for free, even if it is a machine. A block of cheese that weighs 8 oz will yield more cheese than an 8 oz bag.

5. It’s healthier. Because of all the reasons above (okay mostly the additives), doesn’t it sound better to eat just cheese instead of cheese, sodium, modified food starch, potato starch, and cellulose?  

Serve these easy biscuits alongside any of my favorite salmon recipes like this Best Easy Healthy Baked Salmon, Honey Cilantro Lime Salmon, or Herb Butter Salmon and Asparagus Foil Packs, or some of my popular Italian-inspired recipes like Creamy Red Pepper Pasta, or Easy Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana Soup.