Beans and cornbread, recipes and definitions

beans = go out into your garden and pick a bushel of the beans that you grow; or break into the bag of dried pinto beans, navy beans, kidney beans, black beans, etc.; if dried variety, stick a chubby handful per person in a pressure cooker and cover to 1" above beanlevel with water, latch cover, and boil at 15 psi for 12 mins, then drain water, rinse, examine for gravel (discard gravel), add new water to approx same height, cut up a goodsize onion or couple shallots, toss in ham bone or fresh porkroast fat or bacon grease, palmful of black pepper, optionally toss in a skinny green tabasco pepper, then latch cover and cook at 15 for another 35-50 mins.

cornbread = grease up your cornbread pan or castiron with bacon grease or butter or crisco. heat your oven 415°F. Sift 2 cups plain stone ground cornmeal (white or yellow) with 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp salt. Add one beaten egg. Add 4 tablespoons (tbsp) vegetable oil. Pour in 2 cups buttermilk, stir but don’t get too involved with creating an even mixture, just get everything that was once dry wet. Pour into pan, stick ito oven, bake 50 mins. At 50 mins, remove and upend onto plate with a couple of regular table knives to keep base of cornbread from landing on bottom of plate (you don’t want it to sweat).

Note complete absence of flour and sugar in recipe. [huffy south georgia southern mama mode] If it has flour or sugar in it, it’s not cornbread [/huffy south georgia southern mama mode]

Beans: Pintos – soaked and simmered with some kind of pork, onions, and red pepper.

Cornbread: White cornmeal, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, buttermilk and egg – baked in a skillet.

– Uke, late of Cleveland, New Haven, and Brooklyn.

Are you real sure he’s from Kentucky, and not Wyoming?

A big pot of pinto beans, onions and a good squirt of ketchup, served with “hootchins” (aka fry bread – fry a round of bread dough until puffy and crusty brown, served with a sprinkle of sugar for dessert, or a sprinkle of salt to dip into the beans) is one of my Dad’s favorite meals.
They could afford meat, but didn’t think it belonged in a pot of beans.

[QUOTE=Jess]
Fried cornmeal mush is actually quite tasty served with butter & syrup and some bacon on the side. I wonder if you could do grits the same way? I can’t think of any reason why not – it’d probably be good. Maybe with sausage gravy on it?QUOTE]

Fried grits and fried mush are very similar. Both are damn good. Just let your leftover grits set up in a buttered bowl in the fridgidaire, slide the grits out and slice 'em as thin or thick as you like, dust with some flour, salt and pepper and then fry 'em up just like you would mush.

They don’t need gravy, but they might be good with some.

If you leave out the pinto beans, that is the recipe that I have from my Hoosier Grandma’s 1957 church cookbook. My Grandma used to make it, and my Mom used to make it, and I hate it, but I just don’t like beans. From a cooking standpoint, it doesn’t sound bad, though. That’s just how it’s done in Indiana.

Oh, and serve with raw chopped onions and ketchup. That’s the Hoosier twist, I suppose.

To me Beans and Cornbread is Navy Beans soaked overnight, Ham Bone, water to top…but not too much. Basic Back Hills Mirepoix (Onions and Carrots), and salt. Often done as a throw together soup, no oil or sweating of the veg. A soup that is long simmered … a few hours at least.

Crsico melted in a High Heat oven within a cast iron pan {I’ve found that an alluminum Cake pan makes a great substitute.}. A slightly sweet traditional cornbread batter finished with butter and Honey. About 25 minutes at 400F

This is important! The only condiment that you should use in the Bean Soop is Yellow Mustard (French’s if you want to be fancy, I prefer a keg of Plochman’s.). Drizzle it over and stir it in. Maybe, (just Maybe) some fresh onion to garnish, condimentary.

I’ve been to Michigan Bean Soup Suppers and they confuse me… they put out chopped onions, Ketchup? Vinegar…?? But No Mustard???

Another thing is, it should be a meaty hambone. You spend a few minutes trimming off the Ham and cutting it into the soup. Ham eventually means Bean Soup. It’s the Hambone Dessert, some might say the best part.

Pinto or navy beans with ham hock or fatback, salt, pepper, onion, garlic (garlic is my touch, not what I was raised with) simmered all day. The ham hock will net thicker beans (not really soup, more of a side).

Cornbread in a black cast iron skillet, yellow cornmeal, no sugar.

Serve it up with chopped onions and hot sauce, a mess of greens and maybe a skillet of fried potatoes if there are extra mouths to feed.

missred…native Hoosier raised with Appalachian folk, now living in the mid-south.