Anyone have a good cornbread recipe

I have been in search of a good one. Tired of using mixes.

I like to substitute buttermilk when I have it on hand, but sweet milk (regular milk) works just fine. I also greatly prefer to use a little bacon fat (not vegetable oil) in the cast iron skillet, and I don't use a basting brush; I just spoon in a tablespoon or three, and tilt the pan until it's spread around evenly. The skillet should be hot enough that the batter sizzles as you pour it in (and I usually heat mine on the stovetop, pour in the batter, and then put it into a preheated oven). Edited to add: this differs from mine on the flour; my recipe--which is my grandmother's--uses self-rising flour, and omits the baking powder.

Corn Bread Recipe
Recipe Ingredients

1-1/2 – cups yellow corn meal
1-1/2 – cups general all purpose flour
4 – tablespoons baking powder
2 – tablespoons sugar
1 – tablespoon salt
1-1/2 – cups milk
2 – eggs
2 – tablespoons vegetable oil
2 – tablespoons melted butter


Cookware and Utensils:

1 – cast iron skillet
2 – mixing bowls
1 – measuring cup
1 – mixing spoon
1 – kitchen basting brush


Recipe Instructions:

As always the key to great cooking is to be prepared and to use quality ingredients.

You can start off by greasing your cast iron skillet with a little vegetable oil. Set the oven to 425 degrees and heat your skillet. If you don't have the cast iron skillet go head and use a iron baking pan.

Blend corn meal, flour, baking powered and sugar in a mixing bowl. In another bowl Wisk together your milk, eggs and melted butter. Make the corn bread batter by mixing your dry and wet ingredients together thoroughly.

Next using oven mittens, carefully remove the cast iron skillet from the oven. Using a kitchen basting brush or whatever you have available coat the inside of your skillet with vegetable oil.

Pour batter into the skillet and return to oven. Bake for about half an hour or until a wooden tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. The finished product will be golden brown.

http://www.soulfoodandsoutherncooking.com/corn-bread.html

just add a little vinegar or lemon juice to the milk and let it sour for a few minutes.. it really helps the fluffy-factor and improves the taste of the cornbread

oh, and when you have sweet cornbread, sprinkle a little sugar on top before baking - it's a nice touch

but I reduce the sugar to 1/2 c. and sub ww pastry flour for half of the AP listed. I also add about a 1/2 cup or so frozen niblet corn.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Golden-Sweet-Cornbread/Detail.aspx

ETA: I sometimes sub in some yogurt for part of the milk.

and it was excellent.

I'm with Shakespeare about using bacon drippings. Make a HUGH difference.

Mexican Creamed Cornbread

· 2 large eggs
· 1/4 cup bacon drippings
· 1 cup buttermilk
· 4-ounce can chopped green chiles, drained
· 1 cup canned creamed corn
· 2 tablespoons finely chopped pimientos
· 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
· 1/2 cup sour cream
· 1 cup yellow cornmeal (white cornmeal is fine if you don't have yellow)
· 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
· 1/2 teaspoon salt
· 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
· 1 tablespoon baking powder
· 1 cup grated, sharp cheddar cheese or Longhorn cheese

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, oil and buttermilk until well blended. Add the chiles, creamed corn, pimientos, onion and sour cream.

In a separate, large bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and cheese. Stir until thoroughly blended.

Add the dry ingredients all at once to the egg and buttermilk mixture, stirring just enough to blend everything.

Pour batter into a well-greased 10-inch cast iron skillet or pan. Bake at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes or until slightly brown and springs back at the touch.

I learned to make it from my paternal grandmother, who was from the "do it til it looks right" school of cooking. LOL.

All cornmeal, no flour and no sugar. it's a stiffer, flatter, more course cornpone. :9

Cornmeal, stone-ground if you can get it.
Egg
baking powder
baking soda
Salt
You can also add other flavoring like chopped jalepenos, or some spring onion, if you want. I prefer plain.

I agree about using buttermilk in the batter and bacon drippings to coat the pan with. :9

I mix everything until it looks and performs like a cornmeal-based pancake batter, Drop some batter back into the bowl. it should just hold the batter drop on the surface for a second, then disappear.

Cooking tips:

Let the pans heat up in the oven while you are mixing the batter. Especially if you are using bacon grease, wait until they just start to smoke to add the batter. You will get an excellent crust this way. Half way through cooking, flip the bread over and cook on the other side. The pone should not stick.

If you do not have cast iron, well-seasoned cake pans work just as well.


Take out of the oven, slice. Top with fresh butter and any of the following:

molasses
honey
fresh, home-made preserves. :9 :9 :9

1 C. cornmeal
1 C. flour
1/4 C. sugar
3 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 egg
3/4 C. milk
1/4 C. shortening

Preheat oven to 425. Put shortening in cast iron skillet and put in oven to melt. Mix dry ingredients. Add egg and milk. Mix well. Add melted shortening and mix again. If the batter seems too stiff, you can add a little more milk. Pour batter into hot skillet and bake 25 - 30 minutes or until lightly browned on top. Cut into wedges and invert onto a plate.

You can also make this in an 8 inch square pan, but a cast iron skillet gives the best crust on the bottom. Don't leave it in the skillet too long after removing from the oven as it will continue to brown. If you don't like sweeet cornbread, leave the sugar out. You can also increase the sugar if you like it sweeter.

I'll grab a recipe from somewhere and substitute plain yogurt for the milk and if I want really moist cornbread I'll add a can of creamed corn.

I'll often add berries, too, with blackberries seeming to be the favorite. And I've experimented with coconut milk.

As was already said, bacon drippings are a must-- lard was an essential ingredient in your grandmother's cornbread or johhnycake, but good leaf lard is tough to find nowadays, with hydrogenated lard, or 50/50 lard/crisco mixes being passed off as the real thing. Bacon drippings are the next best thing.

cream corn, chedder cheese and sour cream in it. If interested I'll post the recipe. Very moist and cooked in a cast iron skillet.

I really like those little boxes they sell at Fred Meyer for 50 cents or so. Just add 1/4 cup of milk and a whole egg. Whip it up and bake in a greased pan. Once in a while I'll add corn or mix some whipped egg whites in...but I actually enjoy it out of the box with lot's of butter added while it's hot.

Yes, me too. I am not a baker so the little Jiffy box is a good choice for me.

To make it yummy, I slather it with honey butter, which is just as easy (honey mixed into softened butter).

:-)

15 oz can creamed corn
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
8 oz sour cream
1 small onion, grated or chopped fine
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil iron skillet. Mix oil, eggs, sour cream, onion and creamed corn. Combine dry ingredients and add to liquid. Do not over mix. Pour 1/2 batter in skillet, add 3/4 cup cheddar cheese and top with remaining batter. Top with remaining 1/4 cup cheese and bake approximately 45 minutes.

You can also add cooked bacon, chopped hot peppers, etc.

It's pretty rich. It's from Edna Lewis' book The Taste of Country Cooking (one of my favorite cookbooks ever). I post her recipe in its entirety then a couple notes from my experiences with it. Enjoy!

2 cups sifted white cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp lard
1 Tbsp butter
2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Sift cornmeal, salt, soda and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Stir in the beaten eggs. At this point set the baking pan in the oven with the lard and butter added.

Pour the sour milk into the cornmeal batter and stir well. Now carefully remove the hot pan from the oven and tilt it all around to oil the whole surface of the pan. Pour off into the batter what fat remains. Mix well and pour the batter into the hot pan. Cornmeal batter must be poured into a sizzling hot pan, otherwise it will stick. Bake at 400 F for 25 - 30 minutes. Remove and cut into squares. Serve hot.

My notes:
I usually substitute bacon drippings for the lard/butter combo she used. It's a little smokier and more the type of cornbread I like (mom/gma always used bacon drippings for cornbread, so I come by it honestly).

The pre-heating of the oil in the pan does amazing things to the crust; gives you a nice lacy, crispy edge. Where I normally don't like edge pieces of cakes or dessert bars, I'd probably fight over the last edge piece of this cornbread. :-)

I have a small 8" cast iron skillet that I wanted to use the first time I made it, but this recipe makes too much batter for that. In a 12", it seems like too little. So somewhere in between would be good. An 8 x 8 x 1 1/2 baking pan would probably work.

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OK. Now I need to print this thread to PDF for all the yummy ideas!

so dry it falls apart in your hands.

Boston market cornbread makes me retch.

your pinto beans with onions on top. Some cornbread I've eaten tasted more like cake.

thats how grandma made it. Thats how I like it. Grandpa the THE BEST F*ING TOMATOES EVER.

She was a wonderful baker. But I couldn't find it on Sunday and with Chilli? you MUST have a slab of just plain cornbread. So I went to King Arthur Flour's site and tried theirs. The only real difference they didn't use vegetable shortening - theirs uses butter... and let me tell you, it's worth it.

oh and I always sour the milk, use a hot cast iron pan and sprinkle the top with a little sugar... last piece today for lunch. I may make another one next weekend. Soooo good.

I'm determined to integrate more raw foods in our diet and have found some really cool ways to use my dehydrator. This is surprisingly addictive and makes a whole dehydrator sheet's worth. You can undoubtedly also do this in the oven on really low heat, though you're going to kill the food over 90˚ and won't get the air flow to help it dry quickly:

2/3 c raw almonds, soaked 4-8 hours, then drained
2/3 c raw cashews
1/3 c pine nuts
kernels from 2 ears of organic corn
1/8 c or less raw agave nectar (I tend to skip this as it's sweet enough without)
2/3 t sea salt
1 small clove garlic
6 T flax seed, ground just before mixing
2 T chia seeds

Blend almonds with just enough water to cover until creamy; transfer to bowl.
Blend cashews the same way and add to bowl.
Blend pine nuts, half the corn, the agave, salt, and garlic until creamy; mix into bowl.
Stir in remaining kernels of corn, flax, and chia seed and mix well.
Let batter sit for 15 minutes.
Spread onto a 16 x 16 dehydrator tray with parchment 1/4" thick. Score into 25 squares with a table knife.
Dehydrate at 90˚ for 6-8 hours, then flip over and leave another 3 hours or until it's easy to lift.

The end result looks like regular corn bread and supposedly lasts in the fridge up to a week. Sadly, my kids are apparently feeding tapeworms and I can't keep these around more than a couple days.

Otherwise, for regular corn bread, you haven't tasted the real thing until you've ground your own corn. It's amazing what fresh corn meal tastes like. The germ actually goes rancid so quickly that nothing on the supermarket shelf is really fresh.

full of half and half and butter. if you want that sort of thing, i could post it.

i also confess to liking the box stuff. i usually use a nice "lean" version anymore, which the box stuff sure it.
following that old joke about "will i live longer if i do all this stuff?", "no, but it will seem like it"