The Best Cornbread Recipe
I've attempted cornbread and corn muffins many times over the last couple of decades. None have wowed me enough to make them a second time. The thing is, I love corn muffins. Back in 1994, just before I met Mikey, I had a job as a bank teller at Manufacturers Hanover Trust on 14th street. It was a good part-time gig while I was in college. I would go across the street to a diner on Sixth Avenue, and have a bowl of chicken soup and a toasted corn muffin with butter for lunch. I know, a meal fit for an 80 year old, and I was all of 20, but it was pretty cheap, comforting, and most importantly good.
Flash forward some 20 years, and what does one of my best friends bring me back from a recent trip to Washington, D.C.? A sack of white cornmeal from the George and Martha Washington House, located in Mount Vernon, VA. I looked at the sack, and thought "gee, I'm never going to use this before it goes rancid". My experience with cornmeal is that its highly perishable, and this one was simply in the sack. Plus, it was white cornmeal; I usually only use yellow. Marina also gave me a sheet of recipes that came with the sack. I normally never pay attention to those recipes, but I figured "hey, why not".
And then I was schooled in baking cornbread. Not just any cornbread. The best cornbread I've ever made. I'm very aware that it could be the cornmeal itself, and haven't yet tried this recipe with regular, ol' supermarket cornmeal. I have a hunch that while the cornmeal makes a marked difference, it really comes down to the recipe. It has the right ratio of wet to dry ingredients, and just enough butter to add flavor and keep the quick bread from being dry.
Speaking of cornbread, mine just came out of the oven. I mixed one up before starting this post (it's that easy, and fast!), and now it's cooling on the counter for tomorrow morning's breakfast. And now it's time for me to tuck in. A busy week awaits, as I get ready to ship the spring issue of the magazine to the printer.
Originally published April 2015
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