Recipe

Best Cornbread Recipe for Any Meal or Holiday Side Dish

This recipe is so easy, you’ll never buy boxed again.

Cornbread makes a great quickbrad for many meals. Photo by sheri silver on Unsplash

The holidays are approaching and its time to think about the menu. Here in the south, cornbread dressing is prefered. Boxed cornbread mixes are usually sweet and make the dressing sweet, too. That is definitely undesirable.

Luckily, making cornbread is so quick and easy to do that you don’t need to use a boxed mix. This cornbread is crisp and crunchy on the outside and buttery on the inside. It’s great with a pot of beans or used in cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving.

It becomes its own meal with the addition of whole-kernel corn, crumbled crispy bacon, chopped green chilis, diced onions with shredded cheese, or diced roasted jalapenos. If you like sweet cornbread, you can add more sugar, too.

Print this cornbread recipe for your files.

Pat’s Foolproof Cornbread Recipe

This recipe serves 8 generous slices.

Dry Ingredients

1 ½ cup (216 g.) corn meal
½ c (71 g.) all-purpose flour
2 t. (10 g.) baking powder
½ t. (2 g.) baking soda
1 t. (5 g.) granulated sugar
1 t. (5 g.) kosher salt

Wet Ingredients

¼ c. (56 g.) unsalted butter*
1 ½ c. (360 g.) buttermilk
2 eggs

3–4 T. all-vegetable shortening (for the pan)

* You can substitute bacon fat for the butter. If using bacon fat or salted butter, reduce the salt to ½ teaspoon (3 g.)

Step 1

Preheat your oven to 425F. Place shortening in a 9-inch round stainless-steel cake pan or cast iron skillet.

Step 2

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Make a well in the middle.

Step 3

Melt the butter in a 4-cup measuring cup. Add the buttermilk. Then whisk in the eggs one at a time until they are just…