Beans and Cornbread as a Staple

Here in the South, beans and cornbread are considered emergency food. I grew up in the fifties and lived in poverty most of my life, which I wouldn't change even if I could. Beans and cornbread were cheap and could feed a large family for very little money. The same can be said today but today's lifestyles don't include much time for cooking and dried beans take a long time to cook.

Friday was payday for my dad and grocery day for Mom. Friday and Saturday we would have hotdogs or hamburgers (homemade of course). Sometimes we'd have toasted ham and cheese sandwiches made with real ham and real cheese, but on the Lord's Day we always had fried chicken. However, Monday through Thursday it was beans and cornbread.

Cornbread is made in many different ways depending on the culture, but traditional cornbread is basically cornmeal (white or yellow), eggs, milk (regular or buttermilk), flour and oil. These ingredients are combined in a bowl. Milk is added until the mixture barely runs through your fingers then it is poured into a hot skillet or any kind of baking pan then it's baked in a hot oven (400 degrees) until golden brown.

The pan used to cook the cornbread determines the texture of the crust. An iron skillet makes an excellent crust on cornbread but it must be heavily greased to create that golden crust which is difficult to achieve without the right pan and the right amount of oil.

Yellow cornmeal has much more taste than the white but this is a matter of opinion. A number of people prefer white cornmeal to yellow but traditional cornbread is made with yellow cornmeal. Also, traditional old fashion cornbread has no sugar. My mom never put sugar in her cornbread nor did anyone else in my family.

Nevertheless, I put sugar in my cornbread and it's considered the beast cornbread in my family today. I have given my recipe and instructions to a number of people but they say it never turns out as good as mine and when I ask them what they did, I hear the same things. They didn't use an iron skillet or they didn't preheat the pan or use enough oil in the pan because it's not healthy or they illuminated the sugar or eggs for the same reason.

Well, if you want good cornbread it has to be done right. You can't make cupcakes without a muffin pan and you can't make yeast breads without yeast. If you don't add all of the ingredients and follow the proper cooking directions you'll get less than a perfect turnout.

Now, here's how you make real cornbread:

Ingredients

2 cups of self-rising cornmeal

1 1/2 cups of self-rising flour

1/3 cup of sugar

2 slightly-beaten eggs (I whisk them real good)

1 1/4 cups of buttermilk (or regular)

1/2 cup of melted butter (or oil but butter is better)

Heavily grease a medium-size iron skillet then pour about a quarter-cup of oil in the bottom then put it into a hot oven that has been preheated to 400 degrees for about two minutes.

Combine all ingredients then take the skillet out and immediately pour the mixture into it and put it back into the oven. Bake it for 30 to 40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

There are dozens of alterations one can make to cornbread such as adding a can of cream corn or sour cream. Some use bacon drippings rather than butter which is really good. Hot peppers can be added or even sweet peppers. You can also add chopped onions. Drop this onion batter by spoonfuls into hot oil and you'll have hush puppies.

Cornbread can also be fried. I don't particularly care for fried cornbread but a lot of people do. It is cooked in the same way that pancakes are cooked. You may want to add a little more milk and thin the batter a little for fried cornbread.

Reducing the cornmeal and increasing the flour will produce what southerners call Ho Cake or Johnny Cake which is usually baked in a regular baking pan and has more of a cake-like consistency. Boy oh boy, it's gravy-soppin' good!

There are several varieties of dried beans such as pinto, navy, great northern, baby limas, and butter beans. Black eyed peas are considered to be in the bean family where I come from and there's nothing better to a down home southerner than black eyed peas and cornbread.

Dried beans are easy to cook. They should be picked through and rinsed as sometimes they can contain rocks or small dirt chunks. Then simply put them in a pot, cover them with water and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover it and let it cook on slow boil until tender which usually takes about two hours or more. Black eyed peas take about half the time to cook.

When the beans are about done, season them with oil or bacon drippings and add about two tablespoons of salt. You can buy ham bones in the meat department and cook it with the beans which is really good. In the fifties we used what was called streak-o-lean which was a bar of pork fat with a thin layer of lean meat running through it, hence the name. Dried beans can be soaked overnight which reduces the cooking time.

Therefore, when money gets tight, try having beans and cornbread for super one evening. Add a bowl of coleslaw or some sliced tomato and onion and you've got a nutritious meal that costs about half what you would normally have.