Cracklin Cornbread

CRACKLIN' CORNBREAD

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal self-rising
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cracklings (chop into smaller pieces if necessary)
1/4 cup Crisco vegetable oil, bacon drippings or melted butter
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons bacon drippings (for skillet)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place a 10 inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat, add bacon drippings and swirl to coat the skillet.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add buttermilk, beaten eggs and vegetable oil, stir just enough to combine. Fold in the cracklings. Pour mixture into the heated cast-iron skillet and bake in a 400 degree F. oven for 20 minutes. Turn oven off and set broiler on high temperature and broil until top of cornbread is golden brown. Remove from oven and run a spatula or knife around the edge of the cornbread to loosen from skillet. Brush melted butter over the hot cornbread. Serve while hot with your favorite main dish and sides. Cracklin cornbread goes very well with pinto beans and butterbeans.

YIELD: 8 servings

Above cracklin cornbread baked on 02-10-16 and was outstanding; good texture, moist and excellent taste. Served with home made pinto beans provided by Rachel Myers. While this is not my favorite cornbread recipe, whereas sour cream cornbread and/or fried cornbread are my favorites; this recipe takes me back to my youth at a much slower pace in Life! Cracklin cornbread doesn't rise up as high as regular cornbread due to the density of the cracklings.

This recipe is a compilation of different internet cracklin cornbread recipes and a regular cornbread recipe from Robert Webster of which I naturally did some modifications of my own. The general consensus is; most people just add the cracklings to their regular cornbread recipe.

Click on below sequence pixs taken for a larger screen view:

Cracklin' cornbread was normally baked during the late fall and early winter months when hogs were processed and cracklings were produced from rendering hog fat into lard. The crispy skin and meat particles that floated to the top of the lard were skimmed off and were called cracklings. Home rendering of hog fat into lard, etc., is a mostly a thing of the past. I still remember as a young lad when hogs were processed at the old home place and it took most of the day to process a couple large hogs which included rendering the hog fat into lard using a cast iron kettle aka "wash pot" over an open wood fire, hams and shoulders salt cured, sausage making including grinding, adding seasonings and stuffing into clean hog intestines aka hog casings, souse meat made from the hogs head, liver mush and liver pudding, etc. A few food markets still sell cracklings that are produced and sold by the large pork producers for making cracklin cornbread. Current produced commercially sold cracklings have more skin portion in them than lean tid bits of meat if my memory is correct of which I believe it is working excellent today......grin if you must!

Unless you are approaching Senior Citizen status and/or raised on a small farm or where you raised your own hogs, this recipe will be totally foreign to you, especially the terminology cracklings.

Web published by Bill aka Mickey Porter on 02-09-16 with pixs added on 02-10-16.

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