Jun 28

Jun 28 Make Me A Sandwich: Cornbread

I love reading and learning about history. I’m especially fond of the early U.S. history. I’m not that guy that says “USA! USA! USA!” or “we’re number one, the rest of the world sucks!”. It is just the time period that I find the most fascinating. I also enjoy cooking from time to time. So when I got The City Tavern Cookbook I was very excited not only to read the history of the tavern but to have an entire book of colonial U.S. era recipes to try.

While stuck in our home trying our best to get some variety in our diet, Rizzo pulled out her Instant Pot cookbook (the mac & cheese is amazing!) to cook up some pulled pork. Well, I thought that nothing goes better than pulled pork than some delicious cornbread. I was trying to choose between a recipe that is in a cast iron cookbook or a recipe from the colonial United States. I picked the recipe that seemed the easiest and also the recipe for which I already had most of the ingredients in the house.

With that in mind, here is the list of items you’ll need. I’ll tell you there was only one ingredient that I had to purchase before making this cornbread. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to guess what ingredient I needed to buy. I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the blog. Or you can not guess and just learn how to make a delicious cornbread. Whatever you want to do.

2 cups cornmeal
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup of sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
¼ pound lard or margarine
2 large eggs, slightly beaten

Are you ready? OK, let’s get cooking.

Heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Do not preheat your oven. That is literally impossible. You can’t preheat an oven. It is either heated or unheated. There is no such thing as preheated.

While your oven is heated, pull out your baking dishes to be greased. The recipe calls for two 8 ½ x 4 ½ x 2 ½ loaf pans. I thought this was weird since the picture included with the recipe shows the bread in a cast iron pan. So instead of the two loaf pans I used a 12” cast iron pan. I greased my pan using shortening but I’m sure that butter would work just as well.

In a large mixing bowl (and I do mean large because you are going to be pouring all the liquid in this same bowl later) add the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mix it all together with a fork. Don’t get too excited about making sure everything is mixed perfectly. We aren’t talking about sifting everything like you would want to do to make pancakes to get them nice and fluffy. Just get it all pretty well mixed up.

In a separate bowl, combine the milk, lard and eggs. For me, I used shortening as a replacement of the lard. The shortening package said it was a good replacement for margarine so I decided to go with it.

Just like the dry ingredients, don’t mix up everything too much. Just get all the wet ingredients mixed up pretty well. DON’T use a whisk. This dum-dum started using a whisk and everything got stuck inside the whisk. I had to dig it out of the center of the whisk with a fork to get all the wet ingredients mixed up. So, be smart, don’t be a dum-dum, and use a fork.

Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together. Just make sure all the dry ingredients are getting moist (yep, I used that word). You don’t want to mix everything up until the entire batter is smooth. Just stir everything enough so there aren’t any dry spots in the batter.

Pour the batter into whatever baking dish you are choosing to use. Slide them into the heated oven and cook for 30 to 35 minutes. Make sure to do the toothpick test. You know, where you insert a toothpick into the center and it comes out clean. For me, the toothpick test was met after 30 minutes.

Make sure you let the cornbread cool in the pan for at least 30 minutes before you remove it for serving. This cornbread is crumbly and if you don’t let it sit and cool then you will end up with some delicious crumbs instead of nice slices of cornbread.

This recipe makes a delicious and moist cornbread. It is also MASSIVE! The recipe says it serves 10 to 12. I’d wager you could serve even more with this very large bread. The result is very moist and very flavorful cornbread. It will last for 2 or 3 days in an air-tight container. It starts to get a bit bitter and stale after that point but it was totally worth the effort. The next time you have some barbeque make sure to cook up this cornbread.