My mother-in-law makes what she calls "hot water cornbread," which I think may also be called cornpone or corn dodgers. They should be simple to reproduce here at home, right? You just take cornmeal and salt, and add boiling hot water. How much? Well, as much cornmeal as you need for your batch, enough salt that they taste right, and then add water until the consistency is right. Then you form the piping hot dough into little pads in your palms about the size of a squashed egg, and pop them into an inch or so of oil heated to about the right temperature, cooking them first on one side, then the other, until they're the right color.I'm experimenting with making the dough wetter (the two on the left) and drier (the two on the right). My third and fourth batches this morning are getting pretty edible, though they still don't taste like my mother-in-law's. One cup of cornmeal makes about six dodgers.
8 comments:
We always did Appalachian black iron cornbread when I was growing up -- salty, not sweet at all, as sugar was expensive and mountain folk were poor (and, also, likely to devote any sugar they did come by to other purposes).
I haven't had cornpone, but it sounds like it might be good!
Sugar in cornbread is the Devil's work.
I grew up eating cornpone, "real cornbread" (without any sugar) as my Pop always said and all the other Southern breads. My Mom always taught me that when cooking breads/pastry like dumplings, hush puppies and fried apple pies in oil to make the dough a little drier than you normally would for baking due to the extra moisture from the oil it will absorb while cooking. Also, when forming them, to only handle them as much as absolutely necessary since the dough will absorb oils from your hands as well.
Also, fwiw, my Mom always added a little flour to cornpone to give the dough a little *body* to help hold the cornmeal together as it was frying.
Just my .02. You can keep the change or throw it in the "Need a Penny?" cup by the register.
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[Peers around hesitantly, ready to run] Mom's people add sugar to the cornbread they (and I) make for dressing, because it makes it blend better with the giblets, boiled eggs and other stuff.
LittleRed1
Was that a one-log or a two-log fire you used to heat the oil?
Eric Hines
Little Red -- just remember the words of the shape-note song: "On slippery slopes I see them stand/And fiery billows roll below."
EH -- we're pretty good at cooking over fires; I've produced apple pies to astonished and grateful audiences at campsites. But this cornpone was cooked over an ordinary gas burner in a climate-controlled kitchen under electric lights, so as to maximize our carbon footprint. Someone's got to warm things up. We just lost several promising fall crops to an unforecast freeze.
I'd be impressed to see a one-log fire, Mr. Hines. Generally it takes two for the fire to sustain itself; it is in the space between, where heat is reflected, that combustion is most readily sustained.
This is also a good reason to pursue friendship: a man alone has a hard time sustaining enough heat to produce much light.
I'd be impressed to see a one-log fire, Mr. Hines. Generally it takes two for the fire to sustain itself; it is in the space between, where heat is reflected, that combustion is most readily sustained.
What you're after with two logs is the heat confinement that you've described. An open fire would make that problematic for a one-log fire. However, my great-grandmother cooked over an iron oven and range that was fired by logs; the close confinement from the small size of the fire box allowed the one-log fire to work. Or so I'm told; I have only my father's descriptions of that.
I heated my 2600 sq ft, two story dome house in Las Cruces with a wood-burning stove; in that contraption I often found it useful to light off just one log, and to sustain the heating with a single new log added to the embers of the prior.
Eric Hines
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