Just finished a delicious bowl of soup with cornbread crumbled up in it. yum, yum.
Cook a pot of red beans, pinto beans, or purple hull peas with a ham hock and serve over cornbread. Pour an extra scoop of that juice over it. Fantastic meal.
We could go on and on. What else do you love eating cornbread with? Either served with the food or as a side bread?
We started baking all our cornbread in a muffin pan. It’s just easier to serve and there’s no hassle of cutting it up from a pan. But, I’ll eat cornbread however it’s cooked.
SO made ‘chili’ Wednesday: Canned chili, canned corn, a can of Rotel salsa, and other stuff. More like a soup, really. We had a packed of Marie Callender’s cornbread mix from the Dollar Store in the cupboard, and she made that to go with it. She likes her cornbread sweet. I prefer mine without sugar. But I’m easy.
The other day I was thinking it’s about time to make some chipotle-cheddar cornbread. It’s your basic cornbread recipe, but with a cup of shredded medium cheddar cheese and a couple of chopped canned chipotles. (Two chiles are find for most people. If I’m making it for me, I like three.)
Given cornbread, no matter what it’s served with, I’ll almost always hold my piece back and eat it with sorghum molasses as a dessert. Learned the habit from my mother.
I bake it in a deep-dish pie plate. Cuts into nice satisfying wedges that way.
Oh, and the cornbread itself shouldn’t be sweet. If you want it sweet, topping it with honey or molasses is perfectly acceptable and proper, but they’re not mixed in to the batter.
I generally bake mine in a cast iron skillet or cornstick pan, but will do some up in muffin tins once in a while.
I like cornbread with almost anything, but especially with greens. Last Sunday, I fixed a pot of collards with smoked neckbones to practice up for turnip green season and made a skillet of cornbread to go with it. Nom!
It’s also good crumbled in chicken and rice soup or a tall glass of buttermilk ( something my granny called a hillbilly milkshake).
I put a small cast iron skillet in the oven and heat it red-hot, then pour the batter in and bake it. Makes a nice crust.
Another cool, magical thing is to make cornbread batter and pour it right into your pot of chili on to of the stove when it’s almost done. Cover the pot. The cornbread will magically rise to the top and make a yummy crust on top of the chili.
I like cornbread with butter, but it’s also delicious with the juice of any kinds of greens. Not sure why, but the flavor of the cornbread works so well with the tart taste of green juice. Turnip greens is what I mostly have had it with, but also collard greens are fine and even spinach greens.
Now that I’m a grownup, I don’t have to save back a piece. I can have a piece or two with my beans, and still have another for dessert. Except, I like mine with honey.