Damn it… what are you doing giving away my mom’s secret ingredient?
Of course it isn’t nearly as good as grandma’s… she used toenails.
Drawing on my lifetime of experience with people and their habits, those who bring it up every time?
I just think some people take these talks about food too seriously. Yeah, I suppose there are some “foodies” who are obnoxious and really care about what you eat (although, in my experience, it’s more the “natural food” types that get annoying. Yes, I know the chemicals that are in my food. I like 'em thank you very much.) But when it comes to sugar vs no sugar in cornbread, or whether chili has beans, or whether barbecue is pork or beef, or if you put ketchup on a hot dog, etc., there’s strong opinions, but I don’t get the feeling anyone really cares what you do. I don’t put ketchup on hot dogs, I’ll say ketchup doesn’t belong on hot dogs until my dying days, but I don’t give a damn if you actually put ketchup on a hot dog. I create all sorts of culinary sins myself and, if called on it, I just smile and say “yeah, I know it’s heresy, but it’s delicious heresy” or something to that general effect. I don’t really think the person bringing it up really cares. It’s just playful banter to me, along the lines of sports fandom rivalries and things like that. There’s a few assholes that take things too far and too seriously, but, for the most part, nobody really cares.
Has anyone seen cornbread mix in Canada? I would love some to go with my spicy beans and I have never seen it here.
Ike, I’ve done a little googling - from an old thread here that Loblaw’s has it as does Real Canadian Superstores.
From other places, I read that Meijer’s has it, as does WalMart. But I don’t know where you live or if you have those stores by you. 
Whoa, it’s not easily-found in Canada? If someone had said that about Britain, or France, or Australia, I’d be unsurprised: Maize in general and cornbread specifically are both pretty distinctively American. But Canada is culturally so similar to the US, and has enough land suitable for growing corn, that I would have thought it’d be just as common there as here.
Off topic but between this quote and the OP, I have to wonder where cornbread would land in a carb-off tournament. How would it measure up to a french baguette, biscuit, or bagel?
Someone more thorough and fastidious should set it up. I’d do it but I’ll inevitably screw it up.
Any other good recipes anyone can share? Is buttermilk mandatory? Will regular milk do?
Hell no. To quote Lewis Grizzard:
“If you want something sweet, order the pound cake. Anybody who puts sugar in the corn bread is a heathen who doesn’t deserve the Lord, not to mention Southeastern Conference Football.”
Every now and again you’ll run across sweet cornbread in the South, but it’s very rare and usually in places that have a large Northern population. You won’t find sweet cornbread in Dublin, Georgia, for instance.
Also, try subbing melted bacon grease for the vegetable oil.
Heh, and in my experience it’s been the other way around (north = sweet). Or maybe it’s just us New Englanders :shrug:
[QUOTE} And it exists to put butter on it, and to sop up all sorts of tasty food liquids. It doesn’t need to be sweet for either of those purposes. It’s the sweet cornbread that must leave one questioning its purpose.[/QUOTE]
Oh, yeah, I can see unsweetened cornbread for such. Sweetened cornbread is overwhelmingly the norm here, though, even for chili.
That sounds right to me. It seems like one would expect cornbread to be sweet in the south, given the horrific things they do with iced tea and the such (;)), but it’s us Yanks who generally do cornbread sweet.
Thanks very much. There is a Loblaw’s fairly close by, I will check it out tomorrow.
Just read an article in the Oct. 2011 issue of Civil War Times on Frederick Law Olmsted’s travels in the pre-Civil War South. It included the sentence,“Cornbread was served at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and he grew to hate it, describing it as ‘French friterzeed Dutch flabbergasted hell-fixins’.”
Now there’s a man who loved his cornbread!
Small request: if you are going to serve cornbread, skip the jalapeño please unless everyone has already tried your version and wants your version. While it’s not to hard to make cornbread that most will find enjoyable, it is next to impossible to make a jalapeño cornbread that will please more than a small percentage of your party. It’s too hot, it’s too mild, they’re the wrong type/age/blend, you should just add the juice, you should dice them up whole etc.
As Chris Rock once stated in his classic No Sex in the Champagne Room:
“Cornbread… Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”
I’ve been meaning to find a good non-sweet recipe for ages and never get around to it. How will this work if I don’t have a cast-iron skillet?
I like to put hot chili pepper sauce from Trader Joes on my cornbread, anyone else like that?
I like a bit of kick in cornbread, too, but I would never bake it that way for others unless I was quite confident that their tastes ran the same way.
The idea is you want the pan to be preheated. People like the cast iron because it retains heat so well. Using a regular (preheated) pie pan will do the job just fine.
Get one.
Jalapenos are for posers. I either add Ortegas for a mild taste or diced habs if it’s just the wife and me eating it.