Red Lobster Biscuits are a copycat of the famous drop biscuits sold at Red Lobster restaurant! These biscuits are famous for good reason — they’re fluffy, cheesy, and slathered in the most delicious garlic butter. With this copycat recipe, you can have hot and cheesy biscuits ready in a flash, in the comfort of your own home!

Check out our original (plain) Drop Biscuits recipe here or check out this American (rolled) Biscuit Recipe.

Red Lobster Biscuits

It’s no surprise Red Lobster is famous for their biscuits — they’re cheesy, fluffy, warm and smothered in an irresistible garlic butter. No meal is complete without them!

I was completely hooked on these biscuits throughout college, but with a very limited budget, Red Lobster dining didn’t happen all that often. Luckily for me, in my sophomore year of college I had a roommate that made Red Lobster Biscuits with Bisquick® mix. Every time she’d pull them out of the oven, we’d all run to the kitchen. Between those warm biscuits and her “famous” Oreo balls she’d make every few weeks, we felt very fortunate to be rooming with her!

And all these years later, I still crave these biscuits. But over the years I’ve created my own without the Red Lobster Biscuit Mix or the package of Bisquick. No shame in using either, because both can make a crazy delicious biscuit. But with how easy they are to make from scratch, I say why not?!

What Are Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits?

A rolled or American-style biscuit recipe typically involves a biscuit that rises about twice the original hight with a crusty exterior and a flat top with straight sides. In contrast a drop biscuit typically has more liquid to create a wetter dough. The dough is so wet that it is too hard to knead or roll so instead you “drop” it onto a baking sheet and bake!

Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits are a form of drop biscuits with melty pockets of sharp Cheddar throughout. The fresh-from-the-oven biscuits are dredged in a fragrant garlic-herb butter sauce which makes them even that much tastier!

Red Lobster Biscuit Ingredients

The ingredients in these biscuits are similar to my plain drop biscuits recipe: butter, flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and buttermilk. Here are the ingredients that set these biscuits apart from a regular drop biscuit:

Old Bay® seasoning. This is a key ingredient for biscuit flavor. It’s a blend of herbs and spices including pepper, paprika, celery salt, red pepper flakes, and more.
Garlic powder. This goes in the biscuits and in the topping — these biscuits are known for having a present garlic flavor.
Dried parsley. If you’d prefer, use fresh instead — 1 tablespoon minced.
Ground cayenne pepper. The amount of cayenne is very small but gives these biscuits a touch of heat. If you are very sensitive to spice, leave it out!
Sharp Cheddar cheese. We love using sharp or extra-sharp Cheddar. The more aged the cheese is, the more cheesy the flavor.

Quick Tip

This Red Lobster biscuit recipe is intended to be simple, but the one thing we recommend is grating your own cheese. This ensures a great melt and ultra cheesy biscuits. Pre-grated cheese contains preservatives that keep the shreds from clumping together in the bag, but they also keep the cheese from melting smoothly.

How To Make Red Lobster Biscuits

For this recipe, we employ a secret that keeps the process super simple! Most drop biscuits use cold cubed butter and a food processor or pastry blender to cut the butter into the biscuits. But instead of doing this, we actually melt the butter. This would typically be bad for the texture, but we form new butter clumps by mixing in cold buttermilk. When the cold buttermilk hits the melted butter, it forms small clumps. Those clumps will imbue the wonderful flaky biscuit texture that results from pockets of butter without the extra work. Thanks, Cooks Illustrated, for this inventive trick!

Quick Tip

Fat (like butter) forms small pockets in biscuit dough. As it melts in the oven, CO2 from baking powder fills these pockets, making the biscuits rise. Without butter clumps, biscuits turn out hard and flat because the CO2 escapes.

Red Lobster Biscuit Recipe Tips

Use buttermilk straight from the fridge — the colder the better. We want the buttermilk cold enough that it will form clumps when it hits the melted butter!
Lightly spritz a measuring cup with nonstick spray for an easy biscuit release to the sheet pan.
Don’t over-mix. Biscuit dough is delicate — the less mixing, the better the biscuits will turn out!
Watch the bake time. Keep an eye on these biscuits while they’re in the oven so they don’t over-bake.
Let baked biscuits stand. Once you pull them from the oven, allow time for the biscuits to stand for about 5-10 minutes without breaking into them. The residual heat and steam ensure the insides are fully baked through.

Nutrition

How many carbs are in a Red Lobster biscuit? There are 32 grams of carbohydrates in one biscuit.

How many calories are in a Red Lobster biscuit? There are 308 calories in a biscuit.

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