Here in the Promised Land (the South), we use self-rising white corn meal mix to make cornbread. I am not sure if it is commonly available outside of the South. Martha White and White Lily are two great brands of this. It is important to use the white corn meal mix for authenticity. Some corn meal mixes even have buttermilk powder already in them.
2 cups self rising white corn meal mix
2 cups buttermilk or milk
1/3 cup melted shortening, bacon grease or cooking oil
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 425. grease iron skillet ( 10 inch size or so) and place in oven while it preheats. Mix the ingredients in a bowl. When skillet is hot, pour the mixture in and put skillet back in oven to bake for 40 minutes or so.
The batter should sizzle when it hits the skillet. It will still be cornbread if the skillet isn’t hot enough, but the hot, hot, hot skillet is what makes the crispy brown crust.
Ingredients-wise, that’s very close to the recipe our family uses (ignore the location; ancestrally I’m south Georgian); except that we use regular flour not that self-rising stuff, and put baking soda in. Self-rising has baking powder instead. Oh, and it has to be buttermilk if you’re going to use baking soda, if I recall correctly; regular ‘sweet’ milk won’t react with it properly although it will work with baking powder.
We could divide these recipes up by subtype… create cornbreak phenotypes…
Flour or No Flour (F/-f)
Sugar or No Sugar (S/-s)
Cracklings or No Cracklings (C/-c)
Jalapeños or No Jalapeños (J/-j)
etc…
Well, the CI people break it down into Northern and Southern, which I think is right on. The bitchen recipe I keep referring to is the Northern one. Northern recipes have more flour, some sweet, southern recipes are more savory, more about the corn meal.
1 c cornmeal
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c canned cream-style corn
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 c buttermilk
1/3 c melted shortening or bacon drippings
1 c grated longhorn cheese
1/4 to 1/2 c seeded canned jalapeno peppers, chopped fine
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cornmeal, salt and baking soda. Combine corn, eggs, buttermilk and shortening or drippings and mix with dry ingredients.
Pour half of the mixture into a greased 9-by-9-by-2-inch pan. Sprinkle with cheese and peppers and add remaining mixture. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until brown. Makes 9 servings.
Per Serving: Calories: 225; Fat: 14 g; Cholesterol: 60 mg; Sodium: 357 mg; Percent calories from fat: 56 percent.
I’m de-zombifying this thread to ask a question that, although world-shaking in its import, probably doesn’t need its own thread:
White Cornmeal or Yellow?
So, I was reading an online corn bread recipe, one of those traditional Southern recipes that had all sorts of hard and fast rules for making cornbread – iron skillet only, stroke of midnight, howl at the moon, that sort of thing. And one of its rules was that real southern cornbread is made with white cornmeal only. Using yellow cornbread was, while not an abomination like unto putting sugar in the mix, pretty bad stuff.
I have to admit, I have consumed cornbread made with both white and yellow cornbread. I believe I like white cornmeal cornbread a little better than the yellow stuff, but I’m not sure why.
Does anyone know if there are any differences between white and yellow cornmeal that might affect the taste, other than the lack of yellow dye in the white cornmeal? (I kid, I kid, I know that white cornmeal comes from white countries, and yellow cornmeal comes from yellow countries).