Beverly's Southern Cornbread
This is a recipe for delicious and easy-to-make Beverly's Southern Cornbread. It is perfect for any occasion.
This is a recipe for delicious and easy-to-make Beverly's Southern Cornbread. It is perfect for any occasion.
- Carbohydrate 46.0539000012401 g
- Cholesterol 51.3390000040653 mg
- Fat 8.72878125563807 g
- Fiber 3.88518745437264 g
- Protein 7.52231875085692 g
- Saturated Fat 3.2210412523222 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (108g)
- Sodium 844.365000027183 mg
- Sugar 42.1687125468674 g
- Trans Fat 0.6683162502497 g
- Calories 297 calories
Step-by-step
- Preheat oven to 425-450 F.
- heavily coat with 1/4 cup of Crisco shorting a cold 9-inch cast iron skillet – coat heavily because the batter kind of fries in the shorting
- Add dry ingredients together into a large bowl.
- Mix the eggs and butter milk in a separate bowl
- Add the eggs and the butter milk to the dry ingredients.
- Pour the batter into the pre-greased 9-inch skillet.
- Bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until it is lightly browned around the edges, Beverly likes her’s crispy, or until a fork stuck into the center of the pan comes out clean. Serve hot.
Standard ingredient lists hide the mechanical physics required to achieve a crisp crust on traditional cornbread. Specifically, cold shortening placed inside a cast-iron skillet creates a thermal shock barrier when the room-temperature batter hits the metal, frying the edges as the oven heats. Neglecting to coat the sides of a 9-inch skillet thoroughly will cause the batter to stick permanently to the porous iron surface.
Using self-rising Martha White corn meal and White Lily flour eliminates the need to measure chemical leaveners separately, but it introduces storage vulnerabilities. Old self-rising flour loses its potency rapidly, resulting in dense, heavy bread that fails to rise properly within the 15-to-20-minute window at 425 to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Always check expiration dates on self-rising products before mixing liquids into dry components.
Undercooking is the single most frequent error observed during testing. Pulling the skillet from the oven the moment the center feels firm will yield a soggy bottom; wait for the edges to turn a deep, golden brown and ensure a fork inserted into the middle emerges completely free of wet batter.
Pairing this bread with bean-based soups or braised collard greens provides a necessary textural contrast, as the high starch content absorbs liquids effectively without disintegrating on the plate.
