Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation CORNBREAD - THE REAL STUFF

Here you go, boys & girls. The Ten Commandments for cornbread made the old southern style way. Best in the world.

http://www.alabamapioneers.com/ten-commandments-southern-cornbread/

Also some other great old time southern recipes below the cornbread recipe.

L.W.

Exactly!

Double ditto!

When I want cornbread I want cornbread. When I want cake I'll pass on the yellow stuff and go for chocolate with dark chcolate icing.

We're going to try it!

The part about not falling from the skillet, is because it is not seasoned correctly. Around here and in my parents house the cornbread skillet was not used for anything else. But it was used often. miles

You have not lived until you have a slice of sweet corn bread, with a thick layer of Miracle Whip.

Amen!

Oops, amen to the cornbread commandments, not the Miracle Whip! Heathen!😀

lol....

Trolling?

Ab so dam lutley.

Gag me! I may not have lived but this would kill me!

My wife and three son's love corn bread. Me, not so much. I grew up in an Italian house and just did not have it served.

I tend to avoid cornbread. Too dry for my tastes.

Amen on the no sugar. Grandmother put a whole stick of real butter in the makins.

close, but no cigar. They never get things quite right in Alabama. There is nothing in the world wrong with using Lard or peppers in Corn Bread. Adding Creamed Corn is ok too.
this is how my grandma taught me how to make corn bread

Cornbread can be eaten with a spoon if it's in a glass of milk or buttermilk.

Or sweet milk, my favorite. My Dad favored buttermilk or back in my early years, clabbered milk. miles

Cornbread is killer good chunked into pinto beans that have been slow cooked overnight with smoked pork jowls. It ain't bad hot and buttered along with deep fried crappie fillets coated with corn meal.

Two great options there!

Dad used to chunk it up in a glass of buttermilk as a bedtime snack or as dessert after dinner.

Warm skillet cornbread with warm honey butter on top fresh out of oven. Simple pleasures in life are best.

I still do.

You got to be kidden, No peppers in corn bread!

FG, nobody drinks buttermilk anymore.

Well then it looks like my personal goal of becoming a nobody is coming to fruition. SWEET!

While I care little for regular buttermilk except for cooking, I do like me some Bulgarian Buttermilk. miles

This thread made me hungry so I made up a batch of the recipe in the link the OP posted, with the addition of the Mannlicher approved cream corn.
Went real good with a bowl of navy beans, ham and green chili.

I love it when a plan comes together.

For the guys that add creamed corn......I like to try it......how much for a small 8" skillet sized batch?
I'm thinking one can sounds about right.

Fieldgrade,

I made the recipe below in a 10" skillet and it only rose about 1/2 way up the skillet so I think it would be fine in an 8".
Instead of 2 cups of buttermilk, I used one 14.75 oz. can of creamed corn and 3/4 cup of buttermilk. I think maybe it doesn't rise as much because the cream corn makes a denser cornbread.
Anyway, it was good!

Skillet Cornbread Recipe – food.com

Ingredients:

Servings: 8-12

2 eggs
2 cups white cornmeal
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup bacon grease
salt (most bacon grease provides plenty of saltiness)
Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°F.
Put first 5 ingredients in mixing bowl. (If it makes you feel better, go ahead and mix the dry ingredients, whisk the eggs into the buttermilk, then combine dry/wet ingredients).
Mix with large spoon or whisk.
Put bacon grease in well-seasoned 10-inch cast iron skillet over medium to high heat.
Just as the bacon grease is about to start smoking, pour it into the other ingredients, stirring as you pour (if you can manage it). Leave enough in the skillet to coat the bottom and sides.
Pour entire mixture into the skillet.
Place skillet on middle rack of oven; bake until cornbread is springy in the middle, browned and pulling away from the skillet on the sides (about 15-20 minutes).
Remove from oven and invert skillet over serving plate. If cornbread does not drop easily, you may need to run an icing spatula or even a flexible metal egg-turner around/under it so it comes loose.
Recipe halves well, just remember you can’t cut the bacon grease by half because you still need to coat the skillet.
Serve hot, with plenty of butter.

it did not rise as much because the buttermilk is what activates the baking powder. Less acid, less rise.

Ah, good to know. I'll keep that in mind for next time.
I never was much good at chemistry.

It isn't authentic unless you grind corn you grew yourself between two flat rocks that you collected.

Apparently, the 'fire, approves of corn, when it is cornbread. Perhaps sweet corn as well?

The best use of corn is to make ethanol, and I don't mean for fuel.

well at least we agree on that.

baking is a chemical reaction alright

That's the way Dad did it. Mom was from the hills of Tennessee and made cornbread literally every night. I never experienced the sweet or jalapeñoed heresy until I left home.

I'm sure Mom learned the art of cornbread with meal grown on their place and ground at the mill down the hill. Grandpa preempted some for more liquid purposes I hear. 😁

No jalapenos my ass!

A hot skillet with half a stick butter, mix with peppers and cheese.

F Southern tradition.

kooky ruins everything

Thank you.

If I used margerine?

Thanks for posting this LW. I made the Alabama recipe this past Saturday in an old 10" Griswold and it was as good as it gets. That skilletful didn't make it through the day.

My favorite is to crumble up the cornbread into a pile of blackeyed peas. Then stir in hot tomato pepper sauce and cut up a little cayenne pepper into it. Keeps a fellow warm on a cold winter night. I get hungry just thinking about it. I don't cook much any more. I will see if I can talk my wife into it this weekend.

Note: Chemical heat in food is no good for the single purpose of hot. Hot peppers bring out the flavor in some foods. While they are good without it, blackeyed peas and collard greens are two that need just a little hot sauce for full flavor.

I can see some of that corn bread and a pot of the butter beans in my very near future.

PS...please don't tell my doctor I'm eating salt pork.

I've still got my great-grandmothers cast iron corn bread skillet. She was born in 1895, so I figure her skillet has to be at least 75 years old. Or even more.

And I had home made stew and cornbread for supper tonight! It was good!

Putting jalapenos, and a few other things in cornbread, is a Southern tradition. Difference is we deep fry it in small doses and call it hush puppies. miles

The ability to cook up a few "simple" dishes, like this corn bread recipe, will go a long way towards getting invited back to a hunting camp.
Add sticky buns, baked mac and cheese, a tater dish, fried perch/walleye, a fruit pie, and a good pancake, all from scratch, and its guaranteed. Avoid "fancy."
Oh, and cleaning up the kitchen.
This list has gotten me invited to a deer camp in PA, and a fishing camp in norther MI, for many years, and I ain't that charming.

true. I have traded cooking and clean up for many a trip to hunt camp.

There's a bunch of different ways to make cornbread. My grandmother like to make hoecakes, just a simple cornbread mixture fried in a pan. I like it made in cornstick or muffin Griswold pans......and shockingly, I don't mind a little sugar added. I could eat cornbread with every meal, but rarely fix it. Also, fish without hushpuppies, is like a sausage without a biscuit.

Meh, I like all kinds of corn bread. Sugar, no sugar, hot peppers, cheese, honey ........it’s all good.

Except for canned corn or creamed corn. I’ll draw the line there.

I use the recipe on the can that my yellow corn meal comes in.

Quaker brand I think. It has sugar in it.

All it needs is butter, no honey or jam.


I suppose the good folks to the south dont use the Quaker brand?




I did find a recipe that called for bacon grease in it......and was cooked in an iron skillet.


Guess I will try that one.

Now Jim's comment has me thinking about cornmeal just ground from corn. Of course, you need shelled corn, and a food chopper will grind it fine enough. That leaves the germ in the meal. It will not store as long as meal with the germ removed, but it has a deeper, sweeter flavor. Watch for large bits if it is not ground fine enough.

well, customs around here are changin' pretty fast now. but in general and on average, we use white corn meal, we save the yellow stuff for livestock feed.

but, the bacon grease or at least a big dollop of lard in the bottom of the cast iron pan is deriguour.

oh, there' ain't no sugar in real life cornbread. but it's ok to add a sweetner on top, but i don't.

I have never seen white corn meal for sale up here.

my god, how can this country be so diverse in it's eating habits?

white meal down here is mostly occupying the food store shelves.

the yellow ground is considered a specialty, and is available for sale.

white corn meal pretty much owns the marketplace. the flavor is the same?

but bacon grease or lard is oh so much better than canola oil, or coconut oil, etc.

I do not think the color of the corn is going to make that much, if any difference in taste.

u sure about that?

That, looks more like candy, than corn.

"Q: what kind'a candy is it?
A: _ _ _ _ _ corn"

A short while ago I decided to make cornbread like my parents made. They both made excellent cornbread using yellow corn meal. I took me to the 5th grocery store to find yellow cornmeal. All that was on the shelf was white corn meal mixes. miles

I remember ‘crackling cornbread when I was a kid. Haven’t seen it too much around now.

Great, so now I.ll have to bake some cornbread, course it will call for butter, or some fat, and sorghum. My belt is tight enough the way it is.

we use to have it all the time growing up. my grandmom usually cooked supper, and would line the bottom of the iron pan with real cracklins, not the ground up stuff now at kroger's, etc. then pour the cornbread mixture on top of it. was so good.

and there's nothing wrong with yellow corn meal, not implying that, it's just that we always had meal ground from white corn, usually hickory king variety -- big kernels and cobs off of very tall corn stalks. hickory king was sought after for other uses as well.

A friend of my Dad's was a grocery store manager in Texas for many years. He moved back to Montana and got a job managing a store up here.


First day he inspected shelves. To his horror there were only 2 bags of Pintos on the shelf.

He quickly ordered a pallet.

He had to send it back. People up north eat kidney beans and great northern beans.......not pintos.

But have any of you had blue cornbread. One of the few benefits living in Kalifornia is the variety of food products. I can buy Yellow, White and Blue corn meal at the same general grocery store. Not to mention the 10 plus different kinds of flours and brands I saw yesterday as well.

I had a blue tortilla chip once.

Tasted like the yellow or white chips I had eaten.

and wabi didn't believe me

Make cornbread out of candy if you like Mister e, I ain't gonna scrub the pan.

I'll take one color of cornbread and a dozen fewer ridiculous gun laws.

We have been married for 49 years and eating cornbread for that length of time. I never thought much about her cornbread as it has always been good. I printed out this recipe for her to look at and she was willing to try it. We both decided it is the best cornbread recipe we have ever tried. Will be eating with a new cornbread recipe for the next 49.