Try mixing in some shredded medium cheddar and two or three minced chipotle chiles (from a can). No sugar.
For plain cornbread, I don’t use sugar and Wifey does. I bake it in a cast-iron frying pan, and she bakes it in a rectangular baking dish.
Cheddar cheese, Ortega chilis, diced bacon…the list of mix-ins for Southern cornbread is endless.
Sorry, but it appears that you’ve been taken in by Yankees masquerading as Southerners!
Beyond the obvious joke, I grew up between Baxley and Alma Georgia, and Statesboro, Georgia. I never ran into sweet cornbread until college, when I went up north to Athens, Georgia. (And that was in a cafe run by folks from Michigan. Srsly. I worked at that cafe, and felt the need to teach them what cornbread was all about.) I won’t deny that the tea is probably too sweet, and maybe the BBQ sauce as well. But in these parts, cornbread isn’t dessert. No sugar. We like our tea tooth-achingly sweet. Desserts are apt to call for 3 pounds of sugar. But cornbread ain’t cake.
Don’t use sugar. Use molasses. You don’t need to use much, but it ain’t cornbread if you don’t at least wave the molasses over the batter.
I make Rotis (tortillas -ish) in my big cast pan would go good with the fajita filling.
I use this OXO grill pan brush on my cast iron, when/if there’s a gunky spot to scrub. Works better than salt and doesn’t strip seasoning. http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Grill-Brush/dp/B004ZLAGN6/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1440561025&sr=1-1&keywords=oxo+cast+iron+brush
Cast iron pans are primarily useful because they’re massive relative to other cookware in the same roles, and cast-iron has a terrific specific heat value relative to aluminum or stainless steel. This means that one gram of cast iron takes more energy to heat, and releases more energy to cool by a degree than a gram of those other metals.
So what you get is a pan that’s slow to heat, but more importantly, one that’s very slow to cool once it’s at temperature. So while a steak in an aluminum pan at 700 degrees might actually cool the pan off significantly, that same steak in a cast iron pan wouldn’t cool it nearly so much, so you get a better sear on your meat.
Much the same process is probably going on with cornbread as well, only as it cools, I suspect.
Cast iron is good for frying for the same reason- it’ll dump heat into the oil, keeping it at a more even temperature as you fry than say… an aluminum pot would. It’s like a thermal buffer in a sense. Fried chicken is traditionally fried in a cast iron skillet or dutch oven.
So pretty much anything you want to sear and get a good browned crust on, or that you want to cook at a relatively even temp is a candidate for cast-iron.
As for care; don’t sweat using dish soap; the seasoning is a coating of polymerized oil (akin to plastic), not oil itself, so dish soap doesn’t affect it much. I treat mine mostly like I’d treat my non-stick stuff, and if something does stick, I have one of those chain mail scrubbers and a plastic scraper that do the job. I re-season it each use after washing by wiping it with a thin coat of oil and heating it on the burner until it starts to smoke, and then letting it cool off. Seems to work well for me.
I don’t have a cast-iron skillet, but I just ordered one of those chain mail scrubbers. That thing looks like it’s the bee’s knees–better than a pot scraper or sponge, and can be tossed in the dishwasher to be sanitized. Thanks!
I’m not much of a cook, but up here, people say that deer steaks should only ever be cooked on a cast iron skillet, and only turned over once.
I have read that your first step is to ensure your skillet is very well oiled. Otherwise the food you cook will burn very easily.
Cast iron skillets are wonderful. But you really need to learn how to use them.
I use a little honey in my cornbread.
I guess you can’t avoid that.
I don’t use a scrubber or coarse salt on my pans. I used a flat-nosed spatula. (I think mine is Coleman, from the camping aisle at Rite-Aid or Target.)
AIUI, the reason well-seasoned cast-iron is non-stick is because after a lot of use the pores in the metal get filled with oil/grease/food. As the pan is used, these substances become a layer of carbon that continues to build up over time. I use the spatula to scrape off any bits of stuck food because I want to allow the carbon layer to build up, while at the same time take off anything sticking up. On those rare occasions that I do have bits, I do a couple of drawing scrapes with the spatula before rinsing in hot water and wiping with paper towels.
I use a big handful of wadded up aluminum foil to clean mine.
You can’t beat a cast iron skillet for frying chicken.
Or for beating chicken.
Yeah, it’s pretty great. I only use it in my cast iron pan, since the other pans I have are anodized steel and I don’t want to scratch the shit out of them. It works wonders getting scrambled egg residue off the iron, though!
I’ll point out that the handle of a cast iron frying pan can easily break off from a sharp blow. I would recommend a rake or a shovel or just a stout stick for beating live chickens. The edge of a plate works best if you are flattening a piece of chicken breast. Whatever you do, don’t hit Jethro Bodine over the head with a cast iron pan because as Granny found out it will just dent the pan.
I tried to find a clip from Eating Raoul, where Mary Woronov says ‘At the store, can you buy a new frying pan? I’m a little squeamish about using the one we use to kill people.’
With a mighty heave, she tries to wrestle this discussion back on track…
One of the kids just reminded me of a dish that I frequently cook in cast iron - baked/fried apples. Start with a little melted butter, core and chop up apples, add a little cinnamon and brown sugar (plus a glug of apple juice or apple sauce, if you want some syrup - and trust me, you do if there’s any good bread handy.) Cover the pan (foil, random oven-proof lid, whatever you have,) and bake or cook on low/medium on the stovetop until apples are tender. Really nice as a side dish for pork, especially ham, and very lovely on a biscuit for dessert, or atop pancakes or french toast for breakfast. I started making this in iron when I was expecting my now-5-year-old - I was dreadfully anemic, and taking iron pills just seemed to make me sicker. Cooking in cast iron is a great way to add significant iron to your diet. (Word of caution: iron overdose is a very serious thing, and very young children are especially susceptible. If you are cooking for little ones, or for anyone with a health condition that would be worsened by too much iron absorption, bake your apples in something else.)
And tonight’s dinner - gumbo and cornbread - was brought to you by the letters F and e, by way of the iron dutch oven and the iron skillet. (The rice was cooked in my trusty old aluminum Club pot. Because that’s the rice-cooking pot. If I use my cornbread-making skillet and my rice-cooking pot, I don’t have to measure ingredients and wash up a bunch of extra cups and spoons - I can just eyeball it, because I’ve cooked those two foods in those two vessels for about 30 years now.)