I love re-purpose foods to simply our menus and up my game these biscuit hacks fall squarely into that category.  As no doubt you have found coming up with interesting appetizers for large parties, the holiday or when friends visit is one of the little cooking challenges I love.  I didn’t always like it though – normally I gave up and put some sort of vegetable poo-poo platter out.  Now though thanks to copious reading of the Internet and a few canned biscuits I have hacked my way to success.  The first thing you need are delicious flaky and pre-packed biscuits.  I am generally a fan of baking from scratch but in this case I have tried it and the results are no better than canned with about 10,000% more work.

Mini Chili Bowls:

This gives you the excuse to make a large batch of chili and save a bunch for later, I especially like our COLORADO GREEN CHILI which I’ll freeze up in individual servings for cold days.  This is a pretty easy one to make and the hat tip goes to Betty Crocker themselves for both the picture and the idea.

Bake the biscuits as instructed on the can – scoop out the middle, add chili, top with cheese and chives.  This on also makes a great tailgate snack for those November college football games.

Flaky Mini Calzone:

Hat tip again here to the makers of the canned biscuits themselves in Pillsbury for this idea and image.

This is another good party appetizer/tailgate food.  Prep is simple – put one uncooked about 1/3 inch thing piece of dough down, dap some filling, and cover with a second piece of circular uncooked dough. Press together and cook as you would a normal biscuit.  One key there though is to use filling ingredients that are safe raw or have been pre-cooked.  Don’t get fancy trying to fill with chicken when you cant see if its done.

Garlic Balls:

This one is all over the Internet and may have originated from Pillsbury themselves as well – but I saw it most recently on damndelicious.net

This is another simple one, cut the biscuits lengthwise, roll them out into strips.  Fold or “tie” them into knots.  Cover with garlic butter and bake.

Those are three of our favorite Pillsbury biscuit hacks – what are yours?