Hey folks - as a member of the DawgNation community, please remember to abide by simple rules of civil engagement with other members:
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Comments
Same.
My mother is still alive, but barely, so I got her to share her recipe with me so I can keep it in the family. (I don't have any sisters, and my brother and I are both divorced.) Happy to share it here.
Ingredients:
Steps:
While it's still hot, cut a slice, add a small pat of (real) butter, and enjoy. 🙂
*Note: I can track down the specific measurements if anyone really wants them.
I love anchovies on my pizza!
@philipsmith99 and @Huckleberry - I know that recipe is not for fried cornbread like y'all were talking about, But the iron skillet got me thinking, and I realized there are probably some folks on here that don't know how to make cornbread one way or another, so just thought I'd share what I knew with the forum.
If y'all have a recipe for thin/fried cornbread (my mom calls it cornbread pancakes), please share!
My wife learned to make it from my mother. My mother learned from her mother. Passed down from one generation to another. My wife mixes it without even measuring anything. She uses yellow cornmeal that we have ground from one of the few remaining folks in our area that still does it. The lady also grinds fresh grits. They are so creamy and good. They are a little bit more trouble to cook than instant grits but well worth the time. You have to stir them around in the water and wash them several times to get all of the husks and other stuff out that come to the top of the water before you actually cook them. Her cornbread recipe uses the plain cornmeal. She mixes in self rising flour to keep it from being too packy. She uses about a four to one mixture of the meal and flour. Salt to your taste. A mixture of a cup of plain meal would need a one fourth cup of self rising flour. Add in water as you mix it up. Fry a piece or two of it to see if you have the patties thin as you want them. If you want them thick, don't use as much water. If you want it thinner, add a little more water. You need to use a cast iron skillet and use whatever type of oil you use. You want the oil to just cover the bottom of the pan and the pan needs to be hot. Spoon the mixture into the pan with a spoon. It will take you a few times to get your technique down pat. Once you get the mixture down with the amount of water, meal and flour along with the salt, you will be good to go. Just fry a piece or two of it at the time until you get it figured out. Like I said, my wife doesn't measure anything because she has done it so many times. She can look at the mixture and tell if it is right. She often has to tell so many people how to fry the cornbread and how to cook the grits. Things like this are going to be lost in time. Once you learn how to do it, pass it on to family members. She cooked some mustard greens, baked some sweet potatoes, fried some of the cornbread and fried some pork chops the other night. She took a picture of her plate and put it on facebook. She had folks begging for a plate in just a few minutes. Folks are starving for home cooking these days. There were folks wanting to know where the mustard greens came from. She told them from our garden, the next thing was were we going to sell any of them. The little old lady that does the grinding is in bad health. My wife and her will talk for hours when she goes to get meal and grits. She is true treasure. We had two millers in our area years ago but both of them are no longer living. Things of the past.
Read my comment to anotherdawg. It has the recipe for the fried bread. The secret ingredient for the catfish stew? I don't know. My wife was always in the kitchen with him cooking but he wouldn't let her see what he put in it. He died of a massive heart attack at 38. Never had a bit of trouble until it hit him.
Great stuff, and amen.
If you have a chance to try it with the fresh ground yellow it will amaze you. I love to smell it after is fresh ground. It smells like buttered popcorn. Dressing cooked with it is great too. The color of it is so perfect to match a roasted turkey. Fried fish? They are so tantalizing looking with the yellow corn meal for breading. The lady that grinds it told my wife that she usually had a restaurant owner from Florida that bought a lot of it from her. He would drive up and buy it by the hundreds of pounds. He wanted his ground a little bit coarse. He used it on oysters and shrimp. Since the covid hit he hasn't been back for a while. It is hard for her to get white corn. Not a lot of growers locally. Commercial growers tend to use the yellow corn.
It sounds amazing.
Also, I have my mother's dressing recipe as well, which starts with the cornbread. Making that is definitely becoming a lost art. Hers is sublime. I've never come across anything close to it.
If I remember correctly Kirby is a dressing man. There is always considerable debate over which is better, dressing or stuffing. maybe we should do an off topic on preference with Thanksgiving coming up? Also include turkey. Fried, baked, smoked? Did your Mother use a mixture of bread and corn bread? I like mine with plenty of onions and really moist. Chicken broth is good to use in it too. This conversation reminds me of the movie "A Christmas Story". The dad and his turkey addiction. The scene at the end with the dogs devouring the turkey is funny. I guess our Dawgs just devoured all the Vol fans turkey yesterday.
Mom's was cornbread, plenty of onions, and chicken broth, definitely moist.
I'm getting hungry. All we need now is some sweet potato casserole, some string beans, cranberry sauce, some turnips, corn bread, turkey and pecan pies. Maybe a 14 layer chocolate cake. Time to eat, or yeet!
5-star Chef Zone ?
Just thought I'd add: celery and sage are the other two main ingredients.
Also, if you can make homemade chicken stock that is better than store bought broth.
You're right. Southern home cooking should be in a six star zone. Nothing better.
My wife adds sage to her's. I like just a little bit of it though. Chicken stock made from pieces with a lot of fat do add so much flavor. Turkeys often don't have a lot of fat. Adding in some of the pieces of meat make it better too. Tear it up in small pieces and mix it in. My wife often gets hungry for dressing at other times during the year and will cook a small pan of it.