My husband adores cornbread, but for some reason, I never ate it much growing up and really have no clue as to how to make cornbread the way he likes it. I’ve tried a couple of recipes, but none of them have impressed him.
I think he likes his cornbread to be a little sweet, but not to be “cakey”. It should have a bit of cornmeal grit in the texture, and be crusty brown on the outside.
Who is a master cornbread maker and can tell me how to achieve this? Thanks for any help.
Some people like a sweet, moist cornbread.
I prefer mine a little drier.
To achieve a nice crust, I pre-heat my cast iron pan for about 25 minutes in the oven with a thin layer of crisco in it (the crisco, of course, liquifies).
Here’s the recipe I use:
http://www.pepperfool.com/recipes/bread/chip_corn_bread2.html
You can eliminate the chipotle peppers from it. My wife doesn’t like them, so we don’t use them.
I’m 47 years old, and have been making this saqme recipe for 35 years. It’s from the Aunt Jemima cornmeal package, IIRC, but I have it memorized.
2 tsp oil
1 c yellow cornmeal
1 c flour
1/4 c sugar
4 tsp baking POWDER (not soda) (make sure it’s fresh)
1 tsp salt
1 c milk
1 egg
Heat the oven to 425°. Put the oil in a 8x8 square baking pan, and put in the oven while you mix the rest of the ingredients. Remove the hot pan, sort of swirl it around to coat the pan, and pour the remaing oil into the batter. Mix in, and pour batter into pan. Bake at 425° for 20-22 minutes.
Follow the basic recipe for cornbread in Joy of Cooking(1973) and add a bit (1/4 cup) of sugar to the mix. Adjust sweetness to fit your husband’s tastes. Preheat the skillet well and feel free to stir in ortegas, bacon bits, cheese, and the like to vary the basic cornbread.
I like my cornbread as a base layer for beans and chili, so I prefer a drier type. To lighten up the JoC recipe, add some plain flour and subtract some cornmeal.
In my experience, this is essential for a great crispy crust – cast iron and Crisco.
I usually use the recipe that’s on the side of most corn meal boxes – Mrs. Urquhart abhors anything “fancy” like chiles or blue corn or hominy or cheese in her cornbread. I made some the other night by substituting buttermilk for the regular milk, and it turned out really tasty.
Sweet cornbread? Ewww!
Real cornbread doesn’t have sugar in it. (Or flour either).
What you’re describing is “johnnycake”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with johnnycake, it’s just not cornbread).
Here’s what we call cornbread:
Preheat oven to 425° F
2 cups stone ground cornmeal (white or yellow), plain (not “self-rising”)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
sift that together into a mixing bowl
take a baking ban and butter or grease the sides with Crisco or lard.
2 cups buttermilk
1 egg, beaten (just enough to mix the white and the yolk, not frothed up)
4 tbsp liquid vegetable oil (safflower will do)
Mix with the dry items in a mixing bowl until there are no dry clumps, but don’t try to create a uniform paste from it. It will be bubbling. Pour into baking pan. Stick in oven.
50 minutes, then pull it out and flip it over onto plate or butcher’s block to get it out of the pan. Don’t let it just sit directly against a surface — if youv’e got a wire rack for cakes, that’s good, or you can just stick a couple table knives between cornbread and plate, but let some air get in there to keep it from ‘sweating’ and making the bottom soggy.
Serve with fresh pork, mustard greens cooked with the pork bone, a pickled peach, and a bit of rutabaga sprinkled with vinegar that’s been sitting on hot peppers.
I will third the cast iron skillet and Crisco recommendation.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen cornbread baked in anything other than cast iron.
I don’t like mine sweet and usually end up cutting some of the sugar out, especially when I make it for cornbread stuffing. I usually use the recipe on the back of the Albers box, or another brand with a name that is escaping me but has an Indian chief as the logo I think.
I also like to make different types and have thrown in all kinds of things - chipotles, cheese, fresh jalapenos, pork rinds, bacon, you name it.
mmm. I love cornbread. Maybe I’ll make some tonight.
I recommend you do what I do: use the recipe on the back of the Martha White “Hot Rize” cornbread mix.
My husband, the extreme Southerner, likes it baked in a heated skillet; I hate to bother, so I just make it in a square glass pan. It comes out perfect every time … moist and sweet. I prefer leaving out the sugar when we eat it with chili, but otherwise I throw a tablespoon or so in.
Cast iron pan, NO SUGAR.
Ya’ll aren’t from around here, are you?
It was subsistence fare for slaves and poor Reconstruction Southerners, not some sissi-fied dessert.
So where in the country does sweet cornbread come from? I know there’s sweet cornbread and non-sweet cornbread, and my family hails from Appalachian Pennsylvania, where we make it non-sweet. So I always just figured that the sweet stuff came from elsewhere in the country, presumably down south somewhere. But here we have folks from various regions (including some in the South) saying that their regional cornbread isn’t sweet, either. Is it actually a family thing, not a regional thing?
If you want your cornbread sweet, then make it without sugar, as normal, and just slather honey on it after it’s done. Now, that’s yummy.
Nope, sweet cornbread is a New England invention, if I recall correctly. As I said, it’s really johnnycake. Which is apparently a corruption of “journey cake”.
Teela’s from Northern California.
Damn Yankees…
I know that sugary cakey stuff you’re talking about. Years ago, I once tried a cornbread mix which was essentially yellow cake with a vague hint of corn flavor. Yuck!
No, I’m looking for one which has the merest hint of sweetness to balance out the good corny, salty flavor. We like to eat it with chili, and it’s my opinion that the slight sweetness goes well with a fiery bowl of red.
My grandmother’s (very, very Southern) recipe:
ingredients:
2 cups self-rising cornmeal
1 cup flour
2 cups whole buttermilk
1 T sugar
1 t salt
2 eggs
6 T bacon grease or shortening
Mix all ingredients (except bacon grease) in a bowl. Should make a thick batter.
Heat shortening or grease on the stovetop in a heavy iron pan until it JUST begins to smoke. Transfer about a half of the hot oil to the batter. Stir through immediately. Pour batter into hot pan.
Place pan into a COLD OVEN. Set the oven to bake at 500 degrees. By the time you hit 500, the bread should just about be done. Test with a toothpick or a knife (although I usually find this unnecessary.)
The bread should be moist and buttermilky, flakey and delicious. It should have a thick brown crust all over (but thickest on the bottom.) Served over chili, it’ll make you slap your mama, it’s so good.
Oh, and make sure your iron pan is thoroughly greased beforehand. You don’t want some unholy cornbread/iron pan cyborg.
Okie checking in. Here’s the recipe I learned from my mom…it’s pretty close to the recipes used by just about everyone I know. It’s not true Southern cornbread by the strict definition, but neither is it that nasty yellow cake that some restaurants try to call cornbread. (Rule of thumb - if the cornbread is more than about 1 1/2 inches tall, it ain’t. Cornbread doesn’t rise that much.)
1 c cornmeal
1 c flour
1 c milk
1 T sugar
1 egg
1 T oil
1 T baking powder
Mix it together just until it’s all wet and pour it into a greased pan. I usually use a glass baking pan and bake it for around a half-hour at 350. You can also bake it in cast-iron, of course.
I know lots of people that use cast iron and cook it on the stove-top (start with about 3 T oil in the pan), but that’s too much hassle for me.
Whoops, and salt! I forgot the salt!
1 t salt
Why hasn’t anyone suggested an iron pan and Crisco? 
For that slightly gritty cornmeal texture, I heartily recommend adding a half cup of sand. OK, not really. But do use stone-ground cornmeal, which is now pretty widely available in grocery stores.
And my favorite cast iron pan to make cornbread in is a cornstick pan. Cornsticks are just so darned cute! But don’t forget to use Crisco.
I have to disagree in the strongest possible terms. The recipe I posted above rises nicely, and is still quite authentic. It is not sweet or cakey, and the recipe came straight from the heart of Appalachia, I promise.
Yep, this sounds alot like my recipe. Real cornbread isn’t yellow and it isn’t sweet either. I prefer White Lily brand self rising cornmeal.
1 1/3 cups Buttermilk
2 cups of cornmeal
1 egg
a PINCH of sugar… just like you might add to any other bread recipe or sauce to help even out flavors, NOT enough to make it sweet
1/4 cup of white flour, I started adding this a few years ago, it does help with texture and makes the bread last a bit longer without crumbling up
1/4 cup bacon drippings, pour about half into the batter and pour the other half into a hot cast iron skillet (oven should be at 425) then sprinkle a bit of cornmeal into the hot grease in the skillet before you pour in the batter (the batter should in no way be smooth, do NOT overwork the batter, just get it all mixed up and moist)… gives a nice crust.