Let’s not go overboard here. But the ratio should be heavily towards the cornmeal. Like 3:1. It also needs a little bit of sugar, but not more than a tablespoon. Make sure the fat in the skillet is good and hot before you pour in the batter and return to the oven.
Done properly in a well-seasoned skillet, the cornbread should slide right out. Brush the crumbs out and you are ready for the next recipe.
Coarse ground corn meal works best. You can substitute some corn flour instead of wheat flour to get it to hold a little better. Corn flour can just be corn starch depending on what you buy, so use less if it’s just starch. I didn’t right down the proportions but I did make a decent cornbread using extra starch to replace the eggs for someone on a limited diet.
Pizza Rustica is a great dish for a cast iron pan.
How do we feel about sauteeing tomatoes in an iron skillet?
Is it my imagination or is that a Teflon pan in that picture?
Correction, was a Teflon pan.
In addition to other baking applications, a cast iron skillet is great for baking biscuits.
I disagree, no sugar at all.
I believe that the poor guys who began making and eating corn bread in the South had no sugar.
Didn’t they have molasses?
“Probably”, he admitted seeing his thesis crumbling away, “but they did not put it into their cornbread.”
:rolleyes:
We feel that if your pan is sufficiently well seasoned, an occasional tomato sauce won’t hurt anything or add any off-flavors to your dish.
I was unaware that cast iron skillets were used for anything other than clobbering home intruders over the head by small children or housewives.
Was semen pan-fried in a cast iron pan?
I agree. It’s a hunk of cast iron. The fuck could someone do to it with kitchen equipment? I don’t treat my cast iron particularly nicely and it looks great and is nice and slick. Far more preferable to cook in than my roommate’s prissy pots and pans that scratch up if you look at them crosseyed.
Things I cook in cast iron:
cornbread
pancakes
bacon
chicken thighs
fried chicken
steaks
taco meat
grilled cheese
hamburgers
pizza
meatballs
chicken-fried steak
spanish rice
fried rice
etc.
While I have other non-cast iron skillets, I rarely use them. I just cook everything in cast iron.
Fry some bacon. It seasons the pan well, and bacon grease is best for that little dab after cleaning.
Here’s how I clean, when I do (dont clean unless it gets really grungy): Boil some water, pour into pan. Let soak. Clean with soft brush. Wipe, then put on fire. Apply a half-teaspoon of bacon grease. When it melts, use a paper towel to wipe the whole pan, and getting some grease over the entire surface.
One thing nobody warns you about: NEVER leave cast iron on a porous surface, wet. It will leave a big black stain on, say, your nice butcher block countertop, which is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to remove.
I use mine for cooking outdoors, over an open fire. Stuff that is too stinky or messy for cooking indoors. Bacon and fish, mostly.
I cook in a cast-iron frying pan, rinse it in hot water, wipe it out with a paper towel, and dry it on the stove. Sometimes I’ll give it a coat of Crisco and heat it.
Is that ‘following the rules’, or just cooking with it?
First thing you do is strangle yourself a nice Neptunian slug. This why you always buy cast iron cookware. BAM!
More or less what I said. Just dont dunk it in soapy water and scrub all the seasoning off. You then have to re-season it.
Not hard to do, just goes against modern day thinking.
I’m confused. I’ve only ever had sweet cornbread in the south. I had no idea that cornbread could even be sweet until I lived in Georgia. It made sense to me that sweet=southern because in Michigan anyway, the standard is non-sweet cornbread, and non-sweet iced tea, and sickenly sweet everything in the south (cornbread, BBQ sauce, tea, etc.).