Cornbread is as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. But make no mistake about it—there are loads of opinions about which recipe is the clear winner. Any Southern cook worth her grits would be horrified with this recipe, but to my Northern palette, this is the best cornbread I have ever tasted!
Traditionally, Northerners prefer a sweeter cornbread while a Southern cook would never add sugar to hers. In the Southwest, cornbread is often spiced up with lots of onion and peppers.
I was looking for a cornbread recipe to serve with my savory, rather salty ham and bean soup. This one has a little more sugar than most and butter—lots of butter! So it had to be good. (And it did not disappoint!)
Since sweet and salty is a tried and true combination, I chose this recipe made in a cast iron skillet. I have three cast iron skillets in three different sizes, and every one of them is even older than I am. (Shocking, I know!) I use them all the time for cooking and baking!
Lodge makes good skillets today, but if you find old ones, learning how to recondition them and use them confidently is well worth your time. Here's a good article on the subject from The Spruce, one of my most trusted websites.
This cornbread fascinated me from the get-go—not because of what's in it—the ingredients are pretty typical. I just love how it goes together! This was fun!
Everything happens in the cast iron skillet, and I love that! It's all done in one pan, from mixing to baking to serving! Yay!
Melt a WHOLE STICK of butter over low heat in a cast-iron skillet, then stir in 2/3 cup of sugar. Remove the pan from heat. Next, beat two eggs, and working quickly, stir the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture.
In a separate bowl, mix buttermilk and just 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. When they meet, they get excited and bubbly. This is all it takes for the tender, moist loaf!
The secret to this type of leavening is combining an acidic ingredient, in this case, buttermilk, with an alkaline ingredient, baking soda. The resulting bubbles make the bread rise!
If you don't have buttermilk, you can substitute milk that has been soured with lemon juice or vinegar. Put 2 tablespoons of either one in a one-cup measure and fill it with milk.
Another possibility is using sour cream or plain Greek yogurt. If you choose that option, I suggest you thin it with milk until it's approximately the consistency of buttermilk. Try 1/3 cup milk and fill the cup measure with yogurt or sour cream.
When you add the buttermilk and soda mixture to the sugar/butter/egg mixture in the skillet, it bubbles up! So cool! Stir this all together well.
All that's left to do is stir in the cornmeal and flour along with a wee bit of salt. Stir well. There should be almost no lumps.
If you bake it in the skillet, pop it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the thickest part comes out clean.
Here's what your finished loaf will look like! The top will be lightly browned.
Cut in wedges and serve warm. Papa added butter and honey, but for me, it was perfect, just like it came out of the oven!
I crumbled it into my bowl of ham and bean soup and savored every last drop! This morning, I had another wedge for breakfast! Yep, I am hooked! It is the best cornbread ever (in my humble Northern opinion!).
There's something deliciously homey and comforting about cornbread. It's simple and humble, but it's the perfect partner to a bowl of soup on a cold night. I think you'd love it in my Ham and Bean Soup!
Do you put butter and honey on your cornbread? Have you ever crumbled it into your soup? Did you ever eat it like cereal for breakfast, broken in pieces with milk and sugar? Such happy childhood memories!
What's your cornbread story?
This delicious cornbread is moist, tender, and sweet. Bake it right in a 9" cast iron skillet or in a greased 8" square baking pan.
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Love, GB (Betty Streff)
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