We made some slow-cooker chili today (nothing better to coming home to dinner already being done). To compliment it, my wife made skillet-baked cornbread. The recipe (which I've put below) is from A Chef's Kitchen, an incredible restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia. Worth the money if you're ever in the area.
The recipe uses U.S. imperial measurements; this site has conversions to metric. Tbsp. = tablespoon, tsp. = teaspoon, c. = cup.
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Ingredients
3/4 c. (9 oz. by weight) stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 tbsp. sugar
1 heaping tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. aluminum-free baking powder
1 extra large or jumbo egg
2 c. buttermilk
1 heaping tbsp. unsalted butter
Method
Place a well-seasoned, 10-inch (base measurement) cast iron skillet in the oven. Preheat to 450 degrees F (232 C). Allow the pan to stay in the oven for five minutes after the oven is pre-heated to ensure that it's fully heated.
Meanwhile, place the corn meal, sugar, kosher salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a mixing bowl and mix together. Add the egg and buttermilk and mix until smooth.
Once the skillet's ready, toss in the butter. Allow it to melt and brown, swirling to coat the pan and edges. Pour in the batter. Return the skillet to the oven (still at 450 degrees) and bake for 12-15 minutes or until firm in the center and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Turn the cornbread out onto a cutting board, presenting it bottom-side up.
A quick note: as soon as you combine the wet and dry ingredients, the chemical reactions that make it rise begin. So you want as little time as possible between when you do this and when you put the batter into the pan.
Honey butter
Whisk together 1 stick (4 tbsp.) of unsalted butter at room temperature with 1 tsp. of coarse (1/2 tsp. fine) sea salt and 2 tsp. of honey.
Oh that's a beautiful crust on that cornbread. My family always made it in a skillet and ate it with honey and butter too. And I like that the recipe doesn't have as much sweetness as most recipes. Did you miss an ingredient or measurement? The ratios in yours are different than ours. I think our recipe was 1 c. cornmeal, 1 c flour, 2 eggs, and either 1 c milk, 1/3 c. vegetable oil, 1/4 c honey, and the rest was similar. Together the milk, oil, and eggs, and honey totaled about 2 cups, so we had about a 1:1 ratio of dry to wet ingredients.
Nope, that's the ratio, and no flour or oil needed.
I'll have to ask my mom for her recipe again to make sure I didn't forget it. I will have to try this one soon though.
Beautiful! I wanted to make cornbread last week, but I can't find cornmeal in Norway. Found a cornmeal-free recipe (if you can believe it) that relies on corniness by instead including a can of corn niblets, but haven't tried it yet. Your recipe fills me with envy and longing!
Haha, that's interesting, never would've thought cornmeal would be so hard to come by. One possibility is making your own. Here's one recipe using a high-end blender like a Vitamix (dunno if y'all have those over there), but there may be other methods.
Great, let me know how it turns out! As for the sticks, you're right, but I think this recipe assumes that folks are more likely to have toothpicks handy since shashliki (more commonly called shisk-ka-bob here) aren't as common.