All Over the Place Cornbread

So, I’ve been spending a lot of time with family history these last years and while I’ve followed my family tree all over the place, I keep turning around and finding myself in the South. Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, whiskey country and horses, romance, War, Reconstruction and always, cornbread1. All our family cornbread recipes, if there were any, have been lost. Mostly women who cooked learned to cook from their mothers and grandmothers. Ingredients were eye-balled into bowls the same. Every kitchen had a bread bowl. The cook knew how much cornmeal. The palm of her hand was a teaspoon or a tablespoon depending on how she held it. Cups were cups and eggs were eggs and day after day, cornbread was made and slipped into the oven while the table was being set. Then it was served steaming hot and eaten with everything.

Below is a recipe for basic cornbread that, and now I want to be perfectly honest, came from James Strange and you should go to his site and read all about why each ingredient is important to the perfect, fluffy cornbread you are getting ready to make. I learned so much that I am convinced I can not improve on his basic cornbread recipe in any way whatsoever beyond making it so often that I can do it the old fashioned way; with my eyes.

What I would like to add to the conversation though are additional additions and optional options that you can use to fancy up a basic cornbread. For starters, below are some pretty obvious suggestions. I have lots of ideas and will be adding to this list as I try them out.

For this recipe you will want to use a cast-iron skillet if you have one. Otherwise a heavy casserole dish, dutch oven or other oven-proof skillet will do. Mainly you want a vessel that will hold lots of heat and distribute it evenly. I use an apple-shaped casserole dish my butcher kindly gave me one afternoon along with the last bit of pastete that hadn’t sold. Using it always makes me happy.

Ingredients

Ok, let’s get started. The first supposition behind the goodness of Southern cooking is that it will be good for your Soul. The second supposition behind the goodness of Southern cooking is that it will contain fat and salt and that these are a mainstay in food that is good for your Soul. Let’s lean into that just for this evening…

Basic Cornbread

Quantity Ingredient Preparation
2 cups Cornmeal  
1/4 cup Flour  
1 1/2 .tsp Salt  
1 tsp. Baking powder  
1 tsp. Baking Soda  
2 Eggs  
2 1/4 cup Buttermilk substitute: add 1 tsp vinegar to milk
let sit for 10 min before using.
2 Tbsp. Butter for the batter. yum.
plus more for serving.
2 Tbsp. Fat Bacon, chicken, vegetable or olive oil, more butter, etc.

Additional additions for putting 🤩 on your friend’s faces.

And these are to be considered mix-and-match, what’s in your kitchen is what you need. Feel free to ignore the sparkles, those guide my friend Krzysztof to the ingredients in the cornbread I baked for him recently.

Quantity Ingredient Preparation
1 1/2 cups Cheddar cheese ✨ grated
1 small Corn ✨ canned or frozen
1 - 2 Jalapeño peppers ✨ fresh, finely chopped
1 Onion ✨ finely chopped
3 - 4 slices Bacon browned and crumbled
keep fat for the pan

Instructions

Tip: Use the checkboxes as placeholders while you work your way through the recipe. Reload the page to clear them.

Footnotes

  1. Although, according to the always informative Wikipedia article about cornbread it was made in the North as well as in the South. ↩

  2. Use some leftover bacon grease or some goose/chicken fat if you have it, Sister. Otherwise, stick with butter. It’s always a welcome ingredient in Southern cooking. ↩

  3. The fat doesn’t have to be smoking but it must definitely be bubbly and inviting. ↩

  4. No fat around the edges of your batter? You cheated on the amount of fat in the pan didn’t you? Hmm. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Your cornbread might stick, it might burn, it might not taste as good and won’t that be a shame? ↩