Corn Bread

Toward the end of yesterday's post, I mentioned corn muffins and corn sticks.  These staples of Southern dining are the topic of today's post.

Cornbread, in every imaginable form, has been a staple at the Southern table for as long as there's been a South.  Not so long ago, folks in the South ate cornbread at every meal.  Hoecakes, so called because fieldhands cooked them over an open fire in a shovel or hoe, were served for breakfast, dinner, and supper (the big meal of the day, dinner, was the midday meal; there was no such meal as lunch in those times), and cornpone was served for dinner and supper.  Big sheet-cake pans of 'citified' cornbread, containing baking powder and/or baking soda, eggs, etc., were usually reserved for Sunday dinner.  Some cornbread even contained berries or other fruits, and was eaten as dessert.

Corn muffins and corn sticks, however, had special status, at least they did at our house; they were reserved for days when snap beans or greens were on the menu, when there'd be plenty of pot liquor.

Pot liquor, as you know if you've spent any time in the South, is a by-product of the traditional Southern method of cooking vegetables in water, an example of which is the snap bean recipe of yesterday's post.  Pot liquor is the cooking liquid that remains after cooking, with the vegetables removed.  It contains many or most of the nutrients that the vegetables contained before they were cooked, as well as much of the flavor of the seasoning ingredients.  Thus, in order to get full nutrition of a vegetable after it's been cooked Southern-style, you have to drink its pot liquor.

Corn muffins/corn sticks and pot liquor are natural partners.  I mentioned yesterday that corn sticks were my favorite.  The reason is that corn sticks are long and narrow, so they're easier, and a lot less messy, to dunk in pot liquor.  You don't have to pull them apart like you would a muffin.  On the other hand, muffins are easier to eat slathered with butter or margerine.  Of course if you do that, they're not fit for dunking in pot liquor anyhow.

To make corn muffins and/or corn sticks, our ancestors first made a loose batter of plain (non-self-rising) corn meal (white or yellow), all-purpose flour, buttermilk, melted lard or bacon grease, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  They then mixed the batter thoroughly, with a spoon or old-fashioned hand-cranked egg-beater.

Before they started the batter, though, they would have greased the muffin and/or corn-stick tins they were going to bake the bread in, with lard or bacon drippings, and put them in a hottish (425-475 degree) oven to heat up.  There's nothing that sticks to the pan quite like muffins and corn sticks, and pre-heating the greased tins prevented the muffins and sticks from sticking.  If you don't grease and heat your tins, you're just begging for trouble.

When the pans were judged to be hot enough, they were removed from the oven.  Then batter was spooned into the muffin and corn stick molds.  Because stuff with baking powder and baking soda in it rises, the molds weren't filled all the way up.

The filled muffin and corn-stick tins were returned to the oven.  After 20 minutes or so, they were removed from the oven and set aside to cool a little.  They were a beautiful golden brown, and the aroma made your mouth water.  They were served as soon as they were cool enough for the cook to remove them from the tins without getting burned.

Now you may ask, do I make corn sticks and muffins this way?  Well, I won't lie; the answer is no.  I haven't baked muffins or corn sticks to this recipe in a long, long time.  There is a reason for this.  Simply put, I remember doing it the old way, and what a pain it was, and now I'm just too lazy to do it that way.  Especially now that I don't have to.

Corn meal millers, you see, took pity on the likes of me years ago; they started selling corn muffin mixes.  These convenient mixes come with all the necessary dry ingredients.  All I have to supply is the buttermilk, the vegetable oil, and the elbow grease to mix them together.  And I wouldn't even need to supply the elbow grease if I wasn't too lazy to get out my electric mixer.

What brands of corn meal/muffin mix are out there?  I honestly have no idea.  Personally, I use Martha White® Corn Meal Mix, but I don't think it's available nationally.  I believe it's a regional brand that's only available in the Southeastern United States.  If you can buy it locally, fine, but if not, I'm sure that similar products are available in your area.  Seek them out, and if you can't find 'em, please let me know.

Just make sure the ingredients list on the package does not include sugar, because in order to be authentic, muffins and corn sticks, which are to be eaten while you sip your (snap bean, or whatever) pot liquor, should not be sweet.

To prepare the batter using a corn meal mix, merely follow the instructions on the package. And if the package does not instruct you to pre-heat your tins, do it anyway.  Spraying a moderate amount of a cooking spray into the cavities of your tins is a good way to grease them.  Heating the tins in the oven, while the oven pre-heats to the instruction-recommended baking temperature, should do the trick.  After all, you don't want your corn bread to stick, and you have to fight with it to get it out of the tin, do you?  Your pot liquor's liable to get cold.

Happy cooking!