Are you looking for a classic, easy Southern cornbread recipe?

We've got the one for you with the crispiest, crunchiest crust that you're going to love.

Stay tuned!

I'm Trace Barnett, and welcome to Garden Party.

Today we are going to make a classic Southern cornbread that's the easiest recipe you can ever imagine.

You probably have all the ingredients in your cupboard already.

So my aunt makes the best cornbread in town, probably the best I've ever had.

And the secret to her cornbread is the hot oil in the skillet.

So this is my cornbread skillet.

I never cook anything in this skillet except for cornbread.

And so it's well seasoned.

And the key to this cornbread is the hot oil.

So I've got one-fourth a cup of vegetable oil here.

And you really want just a generic oil.

You can use bacon grease if you want.

You can use lard.

But just a generic, high smoke point oil is perfect.

I'm taking my skillet, and I'm just rolling it around.

I really want to coat all of those sides with the oil.

I've preheated my oven to 425 degrees, and I'm going to go ahead and throw this skillet it in the oven and let that oil get hot.

So while our skillet and oil are heating in the oven, let's go ahead and mix our wet ingredients together.

So I've got one egg here.

Throw that directly into the bottom of the bowl.

And I'm going to give that a good whisk.

And be sure to make your wet ingredients first, because that's really going to prevent our cornbread from having lumps which if you have a lumpy cornbread in the South, that's just a no go.

So this is one and a half cups of buttermilk.

I'm going to pour about a cup in here.

And I'm going to reserve the other half cup just in case I need a little bit of extra in our batter.

So give that a good little whisk.

I love the color of the egg yolks in that buttermilk.

And it already smells just like good cornbread already.

So now that we have our wet ingredients all mixed together, let's move on to our dry.

So today I'm using a cornmeal mix, which just basically means that a couple ingredients: baking powder and a little bit of salt are already added to our cornmeal here.

Of course, if you're using an all-purpose cornmeal, be sure and check out the full recipe, because we have those substitutions there.

So when you are measuring your dry ingredients, just like when you're making any kind of bread- I know cornbread, just like when you're making any kind of bread- I know cornbread, such a basic bread recipe, but be sure and level your cornmeal off just because we don't want any lumps.

And if we have too much cornmeal in our bowl that's dry, it will not correlate to our wet ingredients.

Now this is the controversial part, Now this is the controversial part, and that is, do you put sugar and your cornbread or not?

And I'm one of the cornbread people who like just a little bit of sweetness to offset that just tiny bit of salt.

Now I'm adding a tablespoon there.

If you like your cornbread a little bit sweeter, then by all means, be sure and add it.

I'm also using white cornmeal today, because that's a little bit of the North Alabama in me.

And if you like yellow cornmeal, be sure and use yellow too, really has that nice pretty color.

I'm going to transfer our wet ingredients here into our cornmeal mix.

And I always use a rubber spatula when I'm doing mine.

That way I can really scrape the edges of the bowl.

I remember my grandmother always used her hands to mix her cornmeal, which was... One way to do it is all in touch.

And we want a cornbread batter that's got just a tiny bit of movement to it, where we can almost pour it out of the bowl.

I can look here at this cornmeal mix, and I can see that it's a little thick.

So I'm going to pour just a tiny bit more of buttermilk into our mix.

Not too much, just a little and give that a good stir.

I'm going to give this one final good turn here.

Good stir.

And I'm just going to let that sit for up to five minutes.

Now notice when you let that sit, it's almost like the cornmeal itself soaks up that little bit of buttermilk.

And there's a little reaction that happens, and it kind of puffs up.

So that's going to give us that light, fluffy cornbread that we all love in the South.

I'm going to grab our oil and skillet out of the oven.

I love the versatility of cornbread.

So, you can make your cornbread really fit the taste of whatever dish that may be.

I'll start out with my absolute favorite first, and that is pork cracklins.

And I love that little bit of like crunch that the pork adds.

I love that little bit of salty flavor.

Plus, I just feel like a real old pioneer when I'm eating cracklin' bread.

So my best advice when you're first starting out making your cornbread is make it quite a few times.

I mean, you're going to have great success when you first make your cornbread, but visually you're going to know what your batter should look like.

You know, nowadays when I mix up cornbread, I don't even measure anything.

I just... [BLURP BLURP BLURP] And so after you make it a few times, you'll just- you'll catch the cornbread.

Done.

So I have got our hot oil and our skillet out of the oven, and I'm going to just slowly pour that little bit of oil.

You can see it's hot enough when you hear that little bit of sizzle.

Right into our cornbread mix there.

And this is the key.

So you want to take your cornmeal mix.

And I'm just going to sprinkle that all into our skillet.

And if you can hear that- I don't know if you can hear that on the camera, but you can hear that little bit of sizzle.

And it kind of just puffs up down there in the bottom.

That gives that little bit of tack on the outside of the cornbread, which is just so classicly Southern.

So even after I've added that little bit of oil to my cornbread mixture here, I still want a little bit more liquid.

So don't be afraid to add a little bit of this and that.

That's what cornbread is all about.

It's kind of like eye and feel.

So cornbread recipes back in the day started off with literally just cornmeal, boiling water and some salt.

So through the years, and as society has grown in cooking, we've decided to add milk and dairy and eggs.

That's the perfect batter consistency there, absolutely perfect.

And this is what I love about using the rubber spatulas.

You can just get every last morsel of that batter out.

And I'm going to level that out by just shaking our skillet there.

And I'm going to put that back in our 425 degree oven for about 30 minutes, 25 to 30 minutes.

You'll know your cornbread is done when it's kind of puffed up; it's really beautiful and brown on top, and it's going to have that really nice brown crust.

Our cornbread is out of the oven, and now is the time to see if it sticks or it doesn't stick.

So always give your cornbread a good shake.

And it looks like we're off to a good start here.

It's always a little bit better to pull your cornbread out of the oven and let it rest.

Like 3 to 5 minutes kind of allows everything to, like, unstick from the pan if there's going to be any sticking.

All right, let's see if I got the touch here.

This is the moment of truth when you flip it out of the pan and boom, there you go.

And as you can see, that little bit of cornmeal that we put in the pan just kind of crisps up and bubbles up on that crust.

And that's just what you need in a cornbread.

And so, you know, just because I'm from northern Alabama, I'm going to show you my favorite way to eat cornbread.

So we are a type of family that breaks our cornbread off instead of cutting it, I guess because it cuts down on the time to clean.

So I'm going to crumble my cornbread up.

I love it when it's still hot.

Maybe I'll still have some fingertips when it's done.

Crumble up your cornbread, just like that.

I'm going to put a layer of onion in here, a little bit of onion, and I'm gonna pour a little buttermilk right on to that glass.

Now you got to have enough buttermilk so you can see it coat all the way to the bottom.

I'm going to put just a little bit of crumbled cornbread on top.

And there you have it, the Appalachian Parfait.

So you can eat your cornbread any way you choose, but I like mine layered with a little bit of buttermilk and onion.

It's so quintessentially Alabama.

Happy cornbread, y'all.

Cut!

What is it?

Whether you like it buttered, you know, smothered... Maybe not that.

[CREW TALKING OVER EACH OTHER] [ACCORDION PLAYING] Heh!

[LAUGHING] [LAUGHING] For corn...!

[CREW TALKING] Ok. Make sure it's smooth and has a little "vicosity" to it.

Did I just say that word?

[CREW TALKING] Never mind.

[LAUGHING] Screw it.

I give up!

[LAUGHING] I give up!