The cranberry sauce is cooked, the green bean casserole is bubbling and the roast turkey has taken center stage. Despite this Thanksgiving bounty, your plate may feel incomplete without a warm biscuit on it. This soft, leavened quick bread is an essential in our book come the holidays, whether it’s drenched in rich gravy, stuffed with cheese or slathered in butter. And luckily, there are a ton of options on the market that save you the work of making dough from scratch—but they aren’t created equal, so we set out to find the very best canned biscuits for every need.
The Best Canned Biscuits for Thanksgiving and Beyond, According to Our Taste Test
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Published Nov 15, 2022
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The Best Canned Biscuits, at a Glance
Taryn Pire/A Sampling of Some of the Biscuits We Tested
Scroll down for in-depth reviews of each.
- Best Overall Canned Biscuit: Immaculate Baking Organic Flaky Biscuits
- Best Flaky Canned Biscuit: Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers Original Biscuits
- Best Southern-Style Canned Biscuit: Trader Joe’s Buttermilk Biscuits
- Best Flavored Canned Biscuit: Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Frozen Biscuits
- Best Gluten-Free Canned Biscuit: Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit Gluten-Free Biscuits
- Most Dinner Roll-Like Canned Biscuit: Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers Sweet Hawaiian Biscuits
- Best Value Canned Biscuit: Bake House Creations Jumbo Buttermilk Biscuits
The Methodology
To narrow down the list, we first rated the store-bought biscuits by their overall value, ingredients and ease of use. Once we baked and tasted them, we then rated the biscuits on their texture, height, appearance (they should have light, fluffy and soft interiors and toasty, golden exteriors, because presentation is everything when you want your shortcut to stay a secret) and overall taste.
Read on for our favorite canned biscuits for every need, whether you’re a gluten-free baker or just looking for a bargain.
1. Immaculate Baking Organic Flaky Biscuits
Best overall canned biscuit
- Value: 18/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 20/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 20/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 20/20
- Flavor: 19/20
TOTAL: 97/100
Flaky layers and quality ingredients that you can feel good about scarfing down? We can get behind that. Immaculate Baking’s Organic Flaky Biscuits contain organic wheat flour (it isn’t bleached, unlike other brands’ biscuits), palm oil and cane sugar, along with essentials like baking powder and sea salt. While there’s no buttermilk in them, their flavor is nothing short of delicious. They’re sort of like the best elements of both flaky and Southern-style biscuits rolled into one. Think a buttery, soft, layered interior, a gorgeously crusted exterior that lends flavor to every bite and impressive height and browning, all without artificial flavors and preservatives. Pass the butter, please.
2. Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers Original Biscuits
Best flaky canned biscuit
- Value: 19/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 17/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 20/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 19/20
- Flavor: 18/20
TOTAL: 93/100
Did you love peeling these babies apart as a kid (or um, grown-up) and eating them layer by layer? Just us? Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers biscuits have a super crackly, crisp outside and a light-as-air interior that make for a satisfying bite. The layers are visible inside and out, and the biscuits bake high and golden brown, so they’ll have nice visual appeal if you’re hosting. Our main issue is the ingredients: First on the list is enriched bleached flour, then soybean and palm oils, sugar, hydrogenated palm oil and baking powder, plus a handful of preservatives. Nevertheless, their ingredients don’t make them any less tasty, and at 38 cents a pop, it may matter to you even less.
3. Trader Joe’s Buttermilk Biscuits
Best Southern-style canned biscuit
- Value: 18/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 19/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 20/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 18/20
- Flavor: 18/20
TOTAL: 93/100
Southern-style biscuits are typically denser than the delicate, flaky biscuits you may be used to. Usually made with pastry flour and buttermilk, they should be crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and sturdy. Trader Joe’s Buttermilk Biscuits are just that. The main ingredients are much like some others on our list: wheat flour, water, palm oil, cane sugar, baking powder, sea salt, buttermilk and xanthan gum as a preservative. They have a wonderful bready flavor with just the right amount of tang (thanks, buttermilk) and salt. They brown wonderfully, creating a crisp, appetizing outer crust (especially on the bottoms). These biscuits are just as easy to prepare as any other ready-to-bake kind, and they’ll only cost you about 50 cents each. If you want a cheaper option that bakes similarly, try Pillsbury Grands! Southern Homestyle Buttermilk Biscuits instead.
4. Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Frozen Biscuits
Best flavored canned biscuit
- Value: 18/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 18/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 17/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 19/20
- Flavor: 19/20
TOTAL: 91/100
Much like the breadsticks at Olive Garden, the salty, savory Cheddar Bay Biscuits are the best part of going to Red Lobster. And since they're available in your supermarket's frozen aisle, you don't even need to go there for dinner to get your fix. Made with bleached flour, shortening and real shredded cheddar cheese, the biscuits come raw, so they'll take about 30 minutes to bake. (That's about twice as long as most of the biscuits on this list.) You'll also need to prepare the signature topping by melting butter and mixing it with the included garlic herb blend, then brush it over the biscuits' tops.
While these are a bit more time-consuming to prepare, it'll be so worth it once you take a bite. They're salty and herbaceous with tiny pockets of gooey cheese throughout, and their texture (crusty and crisp on the outside, doughy and soft on the inside) is positively flawless.
5. Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit Gluten-Free Biscuits
Best gluten-free canned biscuit
- Value: 16/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 19/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 18/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 17/20
- Flavor: 20/20
TOTAL: 90/100
If you’ve ever taken a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, odds are Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit was on your itinerary. Luckily, you don’t have to take a vacation to try their famous biscuits, since they’re available frozen online. While we didn't taste Callie's original buttermilk biscuits, the base for their chewy, doughy gluten-free biscuits is a special blend of cornstarch, white rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, milk powder and potato starch. They also contain cream cheese, which imparts extra tanginess, moisture and a unique flavor that sets these GF, preservative-free beauties apart from our other faves.
The instructions are a bit more finicky than the canned biscuits on this list, despite the biscuits being pre-baked: You’ll have to wrap them in foil, bake them for 30 minutes, open the foil to brown the tops and bake for five more minutes. Their texture isn’t as biscuit-y as you might expect, as it's on the softer side. They’re a bit pricy, but a wheat-free biscuit that tastes like the O.G. might be worth the investment if you’re sensitive to wheat.
6. Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers Sweet Hawaiian Biscuits
Most dinner roll-like canned biscuit
- Value: 19/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 17/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 20/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 18/20
- Flavor: 18/20
TOTAL: 92/100
If the big day comes and you're still torn between dinner rolls and biscuits, Pillsbury's sweet Hawaiian offering is the ultimate compromise. They're fluffy, soft, yeasty and slightly sweet like Hawaiian rolls, but have all the flakiness and crunch of a layered biscuit. These didn't seem to rise as high as the original Pillsbury Grands!, but it's their flavor that really makes them a home run. These would be especially tasty slathered in tart raspberry jam, or even leftover cranberry sauce.
7. Bake House Creations Jumbo Buttermilk Biscuits
Best value canned biscuit
- Value: 20/20
- Quality and Ingredients: 18/20
- Packaging and Ease of Use: 20/20
- Texture, Height and Browning: 19/20
- Flavor: 17/20
TOTAL: 94/100
If you’re looking to whip up a holiday meal on a budget, look no further than ALDI’s Bake House Creations Jumbo Buttermilk Biscuits. Not only are they soft and pillowy on the inside with a crisp exterior, but an eight-pack will only cost you 79 cents—that’s 13 cents a biscuit, people. They contain mostly flour, water and vegetable oils (buttermilk is further down on the list, along with baking soda for lift, salt and a few preservatives). They bake a few minutes faster than some other canned doughs, the package instructions are easy and the biscuits come in a poppable can like others you’ve likely baked before.
Pro tip: If you find that the biscuits are cooked through but not golden on top, pop them under the broiler for a minute or two until they brown.
Previously, we tested and loved Mason Dixie's Cheddar Chive Biscuits, but that flavor has since been discontinued, so we removed them from this list.
The PureWow 100 is a scale our editors use to vet new products and services, so you know what’s worth the spend—and what’s total hype. Learn more about our process here.
Taryn Pire is PureWow’s associate food editor. A former bartender and barista, she’s been writing about all things delicious since 2016, developing recipes, reviewing restaurants and investigating food trends at Food52, New Jersey Family Magazine and Taste Talks. When she isn’t testing TikTok’s latest viral recipe, she’s having popcorn for dinner and posting about it on Instagram @cookingwithpire.
