Skillet Cornbread Recipe - Weekend at the Cottage (2024)

FAQs

Should I preheat my skillet for cornbread? ›

Preheat your pan

You WANT some sizzle here. This helps develop the perfect crust and keeps your cornbread from being too crumbly. Stick your skillet in the oven to warm up as it preheats; it usually takes 10 to 15 minutes to get your skillet to just the right temperature!

Cast Iron Skillets

The pan should be well-seasoned and coated with butter or other fat. A cast-iron skillet will give you a crusty, crunchy cornbread. Dutch ovens make great cornbread.

The most common reason food sticks to cast iron is because the pan is simply too hot. Because cast iron retains heat much better than other types of cookware, you generally don't need to use as high of a heat setting as you normally would with stainless steel or aluminum cookware.

Cornmeal gives cornbread its classic color and flavor, but too much can make your bread crumbly. Try replacing a little bit of cornmeal with flour. The specific measurements will depend on how much cornmeal and flour is in your recipe, but you should try to have more flour than cornmeal in your batter.

I would not leave food in any pan overnight, especially cast iron. By not removing the food, you invite corrosion to any cast iron product. If you want to keep it in the best condition you should remove food and clean after cooking and make sure you dry really well.

Glass, ceramic, and cast iron work best, but you can also use metal baking dishes.

Let the batter sit before baking.

We found that if you leave the batter to sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes before baking it, the cornmeal has some extra time to absorb flavor from the other ingredients and the leaveners (baking powder and baking soda) get a head start.

While both styles generally use the same ingredients -- cornmeal, flour, eggs, and baking powder -- the variance lies in the flavor and texture. Northern-style cornbread tends to be sweeter, moister, and cake-like compared to its Southern counterpart.

She notes that Northern cornbread is sweeter, lighter, and more cake-like than Southern cornbread. Not surprisingly, it includes sugar (or molasses, in the earlier centuries), unlike traditional Southern cornbread.

Allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes and serve.

Can you bake cornbread in a Pyrex? ›

Glass baking dishes like Pyrex aren't good enough at browning to give southern cornbread a crisp, caramelized crust. The resulting bread will be soft and pillowy throughout. Glass is an insulator, but it's not a great conductor of heat.

As for the best cornmeal for cornbread, either fine- or medium-grind cornmeal is a great choice. Medium-grind cornmeal will bring slightly more texture and grittiness to the batter, which you may or may not want (it's up to you!). You can use fine or medium cornmeal in these extra corny muffins.

Baking Powder/Baking Soda and Vinegar

Because of this, they make for great egg replacements in making cornbread. For every teaspoon of baking soda, you will need one tablespoon of vinegar. On the other hand, if you're using baking powder, you only need heat to activate the agent and make your cornbread fluffy.

Melted butter and thick buttermilk keep this cornbread moist. After baking, I like to run a stick of butter over the top of the hot cornbread so that it soaks right in and stays even more moist and buttery.

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease the bottom and sides of an 8-inch cast iron skillet and preheat in the oven for 10 minutes. Prepare the cornbread mix according to the package directions (optionally adding 2 tbsp melted butter to the batter). Note the batter will be lumpy.

Directions. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and place a 9-inch cast iron skillet inside to heat while you make the batter.

A hot pan goes a long way towards helping your food sear and rise the way it should. One of the easiest things you can do in the kitchen to make your cooking better is to preheat your skillet.

Not much, if any, different from using a regular pan, right? The key difference is that you need to preheat your cast iron skillet before adding oil. You want to wait until your pan is hot to add any type of grease. This will help to prevent sticking and ensure that your food cooks evenly.