Southern Cornbread

Here in the south we love our cornbread.  Many southern families eat it at least once a day. Its not exactly low in fat or carbohydrates. But it sure is delicious and everyone in the family appreciates a hot, crusty pan of cornbread at the dinner table.

There are several recipes for southern-style cornbread. The most used one is probably that tried and true formula on the back of the Martha White Self Rising Cornmeal package. With or without a little sugar in the batter, it’s good cornbread.

BUT, This recipe is the real thing. There’s no egg, no crisco, no sugar. You can use self rising cornmeal or you can use plain cornmeal, flour, baking powder and baking soda. Either way it will be good. Oh, so good.

You need to be careful when making this cornbread. The oil in the skillet gets VERY VERY hot and it can be dangerous if you’re not used to cooking and handling hot oil and hot pans.

Real Southern Style Cornbread
There is no sugar in this recipe. The batter is a bit thin.

Preheat oven to 425*F
Mix together:
2 cups self rising cornmeal
2 cups buttermilk
OR you can use 2 cups plain cornmeal, 6 Tablespoons plain flour, 2 Tablespoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.

The batter will be thin.
You’ll need enough lard to cover the bottom of a 9-10 inch iron skillet by 1/2 inch.

Heat the oil on the stove top until it is very hot, and when you put in a little cornbread batter it jumps around like crazy.
Pour the batter into the VERY hot oil and BE CAREFUL not to get splattered. It will make a terrible noise but that’s what you want. Place skillet and batter in oven. Bake for 25 minutes.
Take the pan out of the oven when its done, run a sturdy spatula all around the edges and under the bottom of the cornbread. Flip the bread out onto a large plate. Smear with a little butter then cut into squares. Serve HOT.

Most of the cornbread people not in the south make is nice and smooth, all pretty and golden when it comes out of the oven. Kind of like Jiffy cornbread (not that I don’t like me some Jiffy now and then). This cornbread is greasy, crisp with a vengeance on the outside and soft as can be on the inside. There is nothing like it!