Another day on my COVID-19 watch…

I am really in the mood for a bowl of chili and have not made a bowl in awhile. I continue to look for ways to clean out my pantry. I check the freezer. Sure enough, I have a 5 lb bag of chopped meat from Costco that would be perfect. I check to see if I have all the ingredients in my pantry. Of course, I do! Check here for my chili recipe!

Now that I have my chili under control. I need a side dish. What about some cornbread? I have never made cornbread. What do I have in my pantry? I have polenta!

Most people use a low to medium ground cornmeal when making cornbread. Polenta is a coarsely ground cornmeal that is typically made into a creamy porridge similar to grits. (Check here for further discussion of polenta.) I like the texture of polenta which I know would be different than the typical cake-like texture of most cornbread recipes.

I also don’t have buttermilk which is another ingredient found in many cornbread recipes. But I do have regular milk and sour cream. Pulling out all the stops on this experiment! I have nothing but time these days to play as I am sure you are also looking for ways to expand your culinary capabilities! It seems that every day is another episode of “Chopped”.

Also, we can’t forget the honey butter that we need to slather on our bread! We can put together a compound butter that will be perfect. Let’s do this!

As always, thanks for Spending Time in My Kitchen!

Best Polenta Cornbread Ever!

0 from 0 votes

Recipe by David Frank – Spending Time In My Kitchen

Servings

8- 10

servings

Prep time

minutes

Cooking time

minutes

Ingredients

1/2 cup 1/2 Butter
Dry Ingedients
1.5 cups 1.5 Polenta
1 cup 1 All Purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp 1 1/4 Baking powder
1/2 tsp 1/2 Baking soda
1 Tbl 1 Sugar
1/2 cup 1/2 Brown sugar
1/2 tsp 1/2 Salt
Wet Ingredients
1/2 cup 1/2 Milk
2 2 Eggs
1 cup 1 Sour cream
2 Tbl 2 Butter, slightly melted
Compound Butter
2 Sticks 2 Butter, room temperature (1 cup)
1/3 cup 1/3 Honey

Directions

Preheat your oven to 400°
Place your cast iron pan into the oven to heat up your pan.
In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients until completely combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk all the wet ingredients together.
Make a well in the dry ingredient bowl; pour in the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Don’t over mix.
Take cast iron pan out from oven. Be careful; it will be HOT!!
Add butter to the hot pan and pour in the cake batter. I love using the cast iron pan!
Place the cornbread into the oven and cook till nicely browned on top and you can stick a toothpick in the middle and it will be dry.
Cornbread is ready to serve! Slice it up and put some honey butter on the hot bread and you are ready to go!
Enjoy!
Honey Butter
Whisk softened butter with the honey. Taste! If not sweet enough; add more honey!
Place compound butter on a layer of plastic wrap and twist.
Twist plastic wrap around the butter to make a cylinder and place it in the refrigerator to harden up to be used at a later time.
Another option is to just place the softened compound butter in a small ramekin and serve with the hot bread!

Notes

You can experiment with making other versions of compound butter. Maybe one with various herbs and spices to put on top of steaks such as garlic, rosemary, parsley, thyme, basil, oregano. Pick out your favorites and experiment!