Old Bay seasoning was created in 1939 by Gustav Brunn, a German immigrant who settled in Baltimore and built a custom blend of 18 spices — celery salt, paprika, red and black pepper, bay leaf, allspice, and mace — specifically formulated for Maryland blue crab. The seasoning stayed a regional secret for decades. Then the internet happened, and Old Bay became one of the most searched-for spice blends in the country, used on everything from french fries to popcorn to guacamole.

The cheddar biscuit with Old Bay is what happens when someone applies a seafood seasoning to a classic biscuit dough and discovers that the celery salt and paprika in Old Bay do something remarkable to sharp cheddar: they deepen the savory notes and add a faint brininess that makes the cheese flavor pop. Bon Appétit’s Bake Club featured these as a technically accessible but flavor-surprising recipe; TikTok picked it up because the Old Bay butter glaze shines under phone-camera lighting and the visual contrast — golden biscuit, orange-flecked glaze — is immediately shareable.

Grate frozen butter into the flour. That’s it. That’s the whole secret.

Cold butter, when it hits oven heat, vaporizes and creates steam that pushes the dough layers apart — producing the flaky, pull-apart interior. If the butter melts into the dough before baking (because your hands warmed it, or you started with soft butter), you get a tender crumb rather than distinct layers.

Grating eliminates the problem. Freeze the butter for 15 minutes, run the flat end of the stick along a box grater, toss the shreds into the flour after every few passes. The thin slivers coat each flour particle and stay solid while you add the buttermilk and scoop the dough. By the time the biscuits hit the oven, you have uniform, tiny cold-butter pockets distributed throughout — exactly what you want.

Work quickly. Don’t squeeze the dough. Don’t overmix. The goal is a shaggy, rough-looking dough with visible butter streaks.

In the dough: 1 teaspoon of Old Bay seasons the interior of every biscuit. It blooms in the fat from the butter and cheddar as the biscuit bakes, distributing the celery salt and paprika notes through every bite. More than 1 teaspoon and the salt compounds with the cheddar into something harsh; less and you don’t taste it inside at all.

In the glaze: 1/2 teaspoon of Old Bay in 3 tablespoons of melted butter, brushed on hot biscuits, delivers the flavor where you experience it first — the surface. The paprika in Old Bay goes orange-vivid in butter and creates the glowing color that photographs so well. The brininess hits immediately on the first bite, before the interior note of Old Bay reaches you on the finish.

This two-layer approach — subtle inside, forward outside — is what makes these different from a Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit (which is butter-garlic forward) or a standard buttermilk biscuit with a pinch of spice. It is a biscuit that tastes like it was made by someone who actually thought about where flavor lives.

Only sharp or extra-sharp cheddar. The reasoning is simple: mild cheddar hasn’t aged long enough to develop the crystalline, tangy sharpness that stands up to Old Bay’s brininess. It melts fine but the flavor disappears into the dough. Sharp cheddar (Cabot, Tillamook, or any block aged 12+ months) has the aggressive flavor you need.

Grate it from the block. Pre-shredded cheddar is coated in cellulose powder to prevent clumping, which interferes with how it melts in the dough and can produce a slightly gritty texture. A box grater and 90 seconds is all it takes.

For a more complex biscuit: replace half the sharp cheddar with a good aged white cheddar, or try a smoked cheddar in place of the whole amount if you’re serving these alongside barbecue rather than seafood.

These are the right biscuit for any seafood dinner — crab cakes, clam chowder, shrimp, lobster roll. The Old Bay in the biscuit bridges directly to anything that would otherwise take Old Bay as a dipping seasoning.

Beyond seafood: creamy chicken soup, beef stew, chili (the briny note cuts through smokiness well), or a weekend brunch with scrambled eggs and hot sauce. They also hold up as a standalone snack in a way that plain biscuits do not — the flavor complexity means they don’t need anything on them.

Eat them within 10–15 minutes of glazing. Like all drop biscuits, the exterior crisps as they cool and the interior tightens. Reheat at 350°F for 5–6 minutes to restore some of that freshness — but the first 10 minutes out of the oven is when they’re at their best.

Scoop the raw dough balls onto a parchment-lined sheet, freeze until solid (about 1 hour), then transfer to a zip-lock bag. They keep frozen for 3 months.

Bake directly from frozen at 425°F for 16–18 minutes. Do not thaw first — the cold butter in the frozen dough behaves exactly as grated frozen butter in fresh dough, and the biscuits come out just as flaky as same-day. This is the standard trick for holiday tables: scoop a triple batch in October, bake from frozen throughout fall.

• Viral TikTok Butter Swim Biscuits — biscuits baked in a pool of melted butter; different technique, equally rich payoff
• Copycat Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits — the garlic-butter cheddar biscuit that inspired this; side-by-side comparison makes the Old Bay version’s complexity obvious
• Viral TikTok Cheddar Bay Beef Cobbler — the same cheddar biscuit baked over a beef filling as a one-pan dinner
• Copycat Cracker Barrel Biscuits — buttermilk biscuits without the cheddar; the baseline for understanding what Old Bay adds
• Copycat Popeyes Biscuits — flaky, lard-based Southern biscuits; a different tradition, equally worth knowing