16 Genius Ways To Use Up Leftover Canned Biscuits

We'll pass on the brown bread, Texas Roadhouse rolls, and Italian garlic breadsticks to get our hands on a warm buttermilk biscuit at the dinner table. Not only is this starch a popular option side for elaborate suppers, but it's also a staple for some breakfast foods and traditional Southern dishes like biscuits and gravy. Luckily, you won't have to make your own fluffy biscuits when there are perfectly good canned Pillsbury biscuits at your local grocery store. Pop these raw pieces of dough on a baking sheet, or use them for something more creative, and you'll have perfectly baked biscuits ready in no time (and with virtually no mess).

But then comes the issue of what to do with these biscuits after all your breakfast sandwiches have been made or your dinner guests have left the table. As someone who tries to limit their food waste, it's a conundrum I've faced many times and one that forced me to get creative and find new ways to repurpose it. Here are some of the best ways to transform your leftover biscuits into something even more delicious.

Read more: 21 Delicious Ways To Use Up Leftover Rice

Make An Easy Strawberry Shortcake For Dessert

Strawberry shortcake is a delicious summery recipe that uses all the leftover whipping cream and strawberries in your refrigerator. While the original strawberry shortcake may have been assembled as an entire layer cake, this American rendition uses biscuits as the base.

The key to making a delicious shortcake is always to allow your berries to macerate in sugar and vanilla for a bit before you assemble your shortcake. Not only does this infuse strawberry flavor all over your plate, but it also means that the biscuit can soak in more juices and carry the strawberry flavor better than if you just plopped fresh sliced berries on it alone. You can also take the easy way out and use a store-bought whipped cream or make your own with cream, sugar, and an electric mixer. This is the perfect dessert to serve when your kitchen is brimming with fresh fruit or when you need to use up the frozen strawberries in the dead of winter.

Chop It Up For Croutons

If you're anything like us, you probably know how delicious croutons are as a snack on their own. Each crouton brims with garlic and herbs and is adorned with the most satisfying crunch when you bite into it. However, other people may just reserve this food as a garnish for salads and soups.

Croutons are an excellent way to use leftover biscuits, especially ones you accidentally left on the counter the previous night. Biscuits are comparatively heavier and denser than standard bread, but they will provide a more unctuous flavor than a boring loaf. Plus, you'll only need a few ingredients: the biscuits (any kind will do), neutral oil, and seasonings. After you slice the biscuits into cubes, toss with the oil and seasonings and bake them on a lined sheet until crisp. The seasoning possibilities are seemingly endless, including garlic powder, rosemary, thyme, parsley, or the standard salt and pepper. We love to use biscuits to add a buttery crunch to soups, but we will also unapologetically snag a few to eat straight from the sheet pan.

Crumble It Up And Add It To Your Bread Pudding

You've probably had bread pudding, but have you ever tried biscuit bread pudding? This rendition of a comfort food classic uses leftover biscuits to soak up the custard base, rather than a crusty baguette or Italian loaf.

Biscuits, including stale ones, are an ideal fit for this recipe because the dryness of the biscuit will act like a sponge for all of the flavors. You can also opt to go with a savory bread pudding, such as one with sausage and cheese, or a sweet one with maple syrup, nuts, and vanilla notes. Cube your biscuits into small pieces before layering them in an oven-safe baking dish with your accompaniment. Before baking, pour the custard over the entire dish and bake it until it has set through. Bread pudding is a dish appealing to all palates, and it's a great way to use up all of the leftovers in your fridge and pantry — including the biscuits.

DIY Your Own Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are a relatively cheap item to buy at the grocery store, so why would you ever consider making them yourself? Homemade breadcrumbs allow you to tone your recipe to the seasonings you love and use the stale bread in your kitchen. You can make bread crumbs with a food processor or by hand, with the former taking less time.

Regardless of how you make your breadcrumbs, you should always dry the bread beforehand. If you have fresh-from-the-oven biscuits, pop them in a 200F oven to dry them out, flipping occasionally. You don't want to brown the biscuits — just zap the moisture out so you'll get crisp rather than soggy breadcrumbs. When you're ready to pound them into smaller crumbs with a rolling pin and resealable bag or add them to your food processor, remember to always work in small batches. This will help ensure that you get small flecks that are perfect for sprinkling on macaroni and cheese or breading fried chicken.

Add Them To The Top Of Your Casserole Dish

Casseroles are a relatively hands-off Sunday night dish you can make, pop in your oven, and forget about. If you forgot to pick up a bag of tater tots or a spare roll of canned biscuit dough for your recipe, you can still make the most out of your casseroles by grabbing those leftover biscuits.

You can use this hack for breakfast or dinner casseroles. If you're making one for the early morning, add the cubed baked biscuits, eggs, veggies, and cheese to an oven-safe baking dish and cook until set. It's a great recipe to use for potlucks since you can make it in advance and bring it back up to temperature in the oven when you need it. You can also make a rendition of a classic sausage and gravy plate by piling on your sausage gravy and cheese with the cubed biscuit pieces in the casserole dish.

Make Panzanella Salad For A Simple Meal Accompaniment

Panzanella salad is a bright, veggie-forward dish perfect for summer nights on the patio. It's an Italian salad containing stale bread, so it's an ideal vector for using up any forgotten-about loaves or biscuits in your kitchen. If your biscuits are too fresh for Panzanella, pop them into your oven to dry them out before you start slicing your produce and assembling your salad. In addition, you can elevate any Panzanella recipe by frying the bread in a pan with oil or butter until it turns golden brown and crispy all over. The biscuits pair well with almost any vegetables or fruit, but we love making this recipe with salty feta cheese, sweet peaches, sharp red onion, and bright tomatoes.

The biscuits for this recipe are not soaked in anything before being tossed into the salad, so they retain their dried-out quality. A proper Panzanella salad is often tossed with olive oil and an acid, like lime or lemon juice, to give it a bright vinaigrette flavor.

Swap Out The Cake In Your Trifle

Trifle is a popular dessert to make in large portions, and it can be easily adapted to whatever flavors your party enjoys. Instead of cubing up pieces of cake for your trifle, revive stale biscuits by using them to sweeten up your dish. Add the fresh, chopped biscuits soaked in sugary syrup to the bottom of your trifle container and alternate with your other trifle ingredients. It's important to note that this dessert can be rather heavy and moist, so it's best made right before you plan to serve it rather than too far in advance.

This recipe has numerous renditions, including a strawberries and cream trifle with alternating layers of whipped cream and berries. The mild flavor of the biscuits is also an excellent backdrop for flavors like blackberries, honey, and vanilla pudding. You can also add shaved chocolate or chocolate pudding layers to make a black-and-white trifle that's as interesting as it is to look at as it is to eat.

Heat Up Sliders For Your Game-Day Spread

Ready, set, hike! Getting your game day fare ready the morning of isn't easy, but these sliders can be made ahead with some help from your leftover batch of biscuits. Slice open your biscuits and layer in your fillings before putting the top on and brushing with a bit of melted butter. Our game-day favorites include turkey or ham with Swiss cheese slathered in whole-grain mustard. You can also pile the buffalo chicken and cheese on high or transform the biscuits with marinara sauce and mini meatballs.

If you notice your biscuits are stale or difficult to slice, you can wrap individual ones in a damp paper towel and pop them in the microwave to bring them back to life. For enough biscuits to feed your tailgate crowd, line the day-old biscuits on a baking sheet and bake them until they're soft again.

Use It As The Topping For Your Fruit Cobbler

We love fruit cobbler — especially blueberry, peach, or apple varieties. If you're topping cobbler with pie crust, you're making a big mistake, especially considering there are other better toppings out there: like leftover biscuits. Dry biscuits are perfectly acceptable for this application since they should be saturated with milk and vanilla before being layered on top of the fruit base. To make your cobbler unique, consider adding a layer of caramel sauce or nuts before you pop it into the oven to bake. You should also add an extra layer of butter on the top of the pan to encourage browning. Once your cobbler is baked and cooled slightly, top with ice cream or whipped cream and serve. You can also adapt the recipe to make mini servings of cobbler rather than an entire tray.It's a great way to use up just one or two leftover biscuits. Cobbler doesn't have to be an exclusively savory dish, either. You can turn cobbler into dinner with Rotisserie chicken and leftover biscuits, too.

Wrap Up Freezer-Friendly Breakfast Sandwiches

Breakfasts in our house are always done in a rush, so we admittedly get a little giddy every time we find a new, easy, make-ahead breakfast for meal planning. These freezer-friendly breakfast sandwiches can be made several days in advance and popped in the microwave, wrapped in a damp paper towel, before you leave the house.

You can also use your leftover fast food biscuits for these buttery breakfast sandwiches. Wrap them in foil and bake for 10 minutes at 350F to keep them soft and pliable. When it comes to the eggs on these sandwiches, you can purchase pre-made egg patties or cook your eggs in a biscuit cutter to ensure that they're the same shape as your biscuit. Once your sandwiches are assembled, wrap them in plastic wrap and again with foil to help seal in the moisture and prevent the biscuits from drying out in the freezer.

Use Them For French Toast

Texas toast, day-old baguettes, crusty Italian — these are all popular bread choices for making a tray of French toast. Although biscuits aren't on this list, they really should be. Their dry, crumbly nature makes them a perfect vector for soaking up the sweet custard. For this recipe, you can use biscuits that aren't perfectly soft since the custard will help bring them back to life anyway. You can also make your French toast better by popping the biscuits in the oven to dry out even more before dunking them in the custard. If you're working with an exceptionally tall biscuit, like the Pillsbury Grands, you may have to slice the biscuit more than just in half to create even layers that the custard mixture can soak through.

Once your biscuits have been dipped into the bowl of custard, cook them for a few minutes on each side until lightly browned. We recommend serving your upgraded French toast with fresh berries or a drizzle of maple syrup. Granted, the biscuits won't have the same mouthfeel as a diner French toast, but you'll still be making the most of your leftovers.

Slather Them With Pizza Sauce And Your Favorite Toppings

The ideal pizza crust is anything but a pizza crust. Naan, tortillas, bagels, and English muffins are often substitutes for the leavened yeast dough, but biscuits might take our top spot for the best replacement. You can make these mini pizzas by slicing your leftover biscuits in half and topping them with a thin layer of pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings before popping them into the oven to melt the cheese and allow the sauce to permeate down into the fluff of the biscuit.

The other alternative to these individual pizza bites is to make a pizza casserole with your leftover biscuits. Toss your biscuit pieces with the sauce, cheese, and toppings and bake it in an oven-safe vessel until the cheese is molten. You can customize this dish with your favorite par-cooked veggies or meat; it's a great addition to a game-day spread or a family dinner.

Add It As A Topping On Your Pot Pie

Pot pie is a dish that's easy to customize based on your favorite meat, veggies, and soup base. But perhaps one of the most underappreciated ways to make pot pie unique is to change the topping. While some people prefer layers of flaky puff pastry or pie crust, a go-to is almost always biscuits. Most pot pie recipes are made with pieces of refrigerated biscuit dough on top of the pie, but if you only have baked biscuits, you can still capitalize on this combo.

Since your biscuits are already baked, they won't need as much time as if you made them with raw ones. The trick is to allow your pot pie to bake uncovered before you pop your biscuit in the oven and finish it off. A thin layer of butter on top of the biscuit will prevent it from getting dry, and you may need to finish the pot pie with the biscuit for a few minutes before removing it from the heat entirely.

Use It For A Party Snack Mix

Cheryl Day, cookbook author and Southern food guru, knows a lot about what goes into making the perfect biscuit. She also knows a lot about how to make the most of this popular baked good for more than just butter and jam.

Day transforms leftover biscuits into a unique party snack by baking the biscuit cubes on a sheet pan until crispy, which will take about eight to 12 minutes. Then, she combines the golden biscuit pieces with other savory snack foods, like salted pecans, pretzels, sesame seeds, and cereal, before re-baking the entire mixture coated in a spicy sauce made with Worcestershire sauce, honey, and pantry seasoning. This recipe is full of pops of texture and color and will hit all of the umami flavor notes that your palate is craving. Plus, it uses the leftover biscuits sitting on your counter, and the small snack-sized ingredients pushed to the back of your pantry.

Try Your Hand At Biscuit Pudding

Biscuit pudding shares some similarities with bread pudding, but it is often relegated to its own separate type of dessert. This vintage recipe is relatively inexpensive to make at home and will make quick use of leftover biscuits. Unlike bread pudding, where the bread is often left in whole chunks, biscuit pudding pulverizes the biscuits into coarse crumbs and mixes them with the custard until a mushy mixture is created. Then, the mixture is baked until it resembles a thick pudding. Some recipes will also top the dish with a meringue before baking.

Historically, biscuit pudding is served with a scoop of ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream on top. Although the plain version is popular, some creative bakers will add a bit of almond extract or orange zest to perk it up. You'll also see some recipes with nuts or dried fruit, but sticklers will argue that this disrupts the unique texture of the pudding.

Transform Them Into Crackers For Your Charcuterie Board

Why buy crackers at the store for your charcuterie board when you have leftover biscuits? You can transform your leftover biscuits into crisp crackers, perfect for piling with cheese, fig jam, or fine meats. Start by thinly slicing your biscuits with a serrated knife into ?-inch to ?-inch pieces. Any thicker and your biscuits will remain doughy and soft. Once your pieces are on a baking sheet, you can add a sprinkle of your favorite spices (we recommend garlic powder and salt) before popping them into your oven and baking them.

During the baking time, flip the pieces at least once to ensure that they bake evenly on both sides. Once the crackers are cooled on the sheet, you can serve them on your board or pop them in an airtight container to enjoy for a few extra days. This recipe is easily customizable depending on the ingredients and flavors on your board, and you'll make the most of your leftover biscuits in the process. What's not to love?

Read the original article on Tasting Table.