I'd like to prepare some cornbread tonight to go with our chicken and rice and veggies. I'm pretty excited about it, too because I've not yet tried cornbread but I hear it's delish by my fellows down south.
Fact is: I don't own a cast iron skillet as of yet. It's either something I'll pick up soon or put on the wedding gift registry. Though I happen to think registries are for things like china and knick-knacks, but that's just me and I'm not always in my right mind as many will attest. If you speak with some, the only real way to make cornbread is in a cast iron pan and that's it. I don't own one yet so this will have to do.
So, simple easy cornbread recipe I picked up goes as follows:
Ingredients
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. oil (I'm assuming canola or vegetable but it's not specific)
2 whole eggs, beaten.
1 cup milk (some recipes I've seen call for a buttermilk-milk mixture--prob just a personal taste thing)
1-1/2 cup Flour (again, I've seen some recipes say self-rising flour but maybe that's an American thing?)
1 Tbsp Baking Powder.
1/8 tsp salt (regular table salt, not the chunky sea variety of course)
1-1/2 c. Yellow cornmeal (though I've also seen white cornmeal stated. Not sure what the difference is...bleached, perhaps? Any of my American readers know this?)
To prepare:
1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until moist. Bake in a greased 9" pan at 400F for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Note: You can probably play around with the amount of sugar you use, and or add things like onion, garlic, bacon, broccoli, jalapenos, cheese. I've seen it all...just never tried it. For now, though I will just try the basic recipe.
Post-cooking note: It turned out EXCELLENT! I actually ended up serving some marinated pork instead of chicken breasts and what I really loved was how the cornbread added a little sweetness to the savory of the pork marinade. It also picks up a lot of the flavours like most breads would do. RB is slowly devouring the pan of it. Oh, and instead of the square pan I decided to use a round cake pan which would have it turn out similar to using the skillet. A+ for this stuff!
If RB doesn't finish off the pan tonight, try heating a slice for breakfast. Halve it and spread with butter and some maple syrup. Mmmmm! That's how I grew up eating cornbread!
ReplyDeleteOooh will do! Yes there happens to be a wedge left in the pan so I will do that this morning!
ReplyDeleteI have never made cornbread, but it's on my to-do list - as well as getting cast iron skillets! We were given one as a wedding gift from his nana - an old, seasoned one - and I took one look at the "dirty" black pan and told Ryan to throw it out. Whoops. :)
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