Cornbread - Country Recipes
Of all country recipes, cornbread numbers among the most versatile. Ask twelve country cooks how to make cornbread, and you’ll get twelve different responses. And, you’re simply not country if you haven’t sampled this warm, golden bread with liberal amounts of soft butter, saturated with sorghum syrup!
Corn bread is multi-purpose, in that many scrumptious variations have evolved over time. There is sweet milk cornbread, sour milk cornbread, butter milk cornbread and hot water cornbread to name a few.
Corn meal is the basic ingredient for all cornbreads. Attempting to part a Southern cook from her cornmeal is nearly as blasphemous as adultery! Not to mention our daily bread, we use meal to fry-up fish, rabbit, squirrel and put in chess pies.
Hush puppies are small cousins to corn bread. An old southern legend accounts for their name. When Union soldiers threatened their camps, the Confederate soldiers would throw out little balls of cornbread mixture to “hush the puppies”.
Some folks add a little flour to obtain a better shaped “puppy”. It’s impossible to host a fish-fry without crisp, crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside, hush puppies.
When you need a potluck pleaser, consider Tex-Mex corn bread. It’s so moist, sweet and spicy, you don’t even need butter.
An older and perhaps the simplest version of cornbread are hoecakes. Cornmeal, salt and water were mixed, put on a hoe and cooked over a campfire.
And, what respectable country cook would consider making “light bread dressing”? If you’re a foodie, you owe it to yourself to try cornbread dressing, or as some folks call it “stuffing”.
Be aware and beware. Country cooks add sugar to almost everything, including cornbread.
How about starting with old-timey Texas Sweet Milk Cornbread?
Ingredients:
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup sifted flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 cup sweet milk
1/3 cup melted shortening
Preparation:
In a bowl, sift cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.
Beat egg and milk and combine with dry ingredients. Add shortening and pour into prepared hot, greased cast iron skillet. (Note: one may substitute bacon drippings for shortening.)
Take care; the mixture will sizzle when it marries with the hot grease.
Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven and serve immediately.
Hush Puppies
About now, your mouth is probably watering for a country recipe for hush puppies! If so, drag out the deep fryer from underneath the cabinet and let’s get busy with it.
Ingredients:
2 cups (let us say together) corn meal
1 tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
Preparation:
Mix dry ingredients; add onion, then buttermilk and beaten egg. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fryer and fry to golden brown. Drain on paper towel.
Country Recipes – Cornbread
Corn meal comes in two colors – white and yellow – depending upon what color of ground corn is used in manufacturing. According to the Lily Flour Company: “They are interchangeable in recipes. Historically, white corn meal is preferred in the South and yellow is preferred in Texas and the rest of the U.S.”
You now have the basic recipe for country cornbread. Enjoy!
