Cornbread Casserole
Sorry, Julia, but this recipe isn't exactly fine dining. I had to write about it, however, because it turned out to be reallllly good and was easy to make. If she'd ever come across this recipe, I'm sure Julia Child would have been a fan of this as well. If you're looking for an easy side dish to go along with your dinner you might want to try this.
Warning -- don't let the name throw you off. This is definitely NOT another variation of cornbread. You've probably noticed that there are a bazillion types of cornbread recipes - cornbread, jalapeno cornbread, cheese cornbread, raspberry cornbread, cornbread muffins, and the list goes on and on and on. That's NOT what this is, really! This is a wonderfully fluffy casserole and it has bacon in it! Right there you know it has to be good. Just look at how simple the ingredient list is:
- 1 cup cornmeal
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbs baking powder
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 Tbs sugar
- 1 (16-ounce) bag frozen corn, thawed and drained
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup sour cream
- 6 Tbs butter, melted
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 8 ounces bacon, cooked until crispy and diced
- 1-2 jalepenos, minced
- 1 1/2 cups grated mexican blend (or just cheddar) cheese, divided
The preparation of ingredients goes quick on this so I started the oven preheating to 350F before I did anything else and also greased a 9x13-inch baking dish and sat it aside. The first thing I mixed up was all of the dry ingredients (cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar) in a large mixing bowl using a whisk. Then the corn, milk and sour cream were stirred in until evenly combined.
While I was mixing those ingredients I managed to actually successfully multi-task (I know, that's hard to believe) and was frying the bacon until crispy. When the bacon was crispy I chopped it up and mixed it into the other mixture, as well as the butter, black pepper, jalapenos, and shredded cheese. Those ingredients only needed to be mixed enough until just combined -- too much mixing could crumble the bacon into bacon dust. I'd intended to reserve a bit of the bacon to sprinkle on the top of everything once the mixture was in the baking dish...but I forgot. Next time I'll hang onto some of the bacon to add some nice color on top.
Once everything was mixed I poured it into the baking dish and smoothed the top. I added the remaining shredded cheese evenly on top and baked it for 40-45 minutes. I knew it was done when the cheese was melted and it had a lovely golden brown color.
Remember at the beginning when I mentioned that this wasn't fine dining but it was a great side dish? I wasn't kidding -- the entree for the dinner this night was...corn dogs. Not from scratch corn dogs. No, these were the basic box of corn dogs from the freezer section of the grocery store. Do I get partial credit for using the air fryer instead of the microwave to cook the corn dogs? Everyone needs an easy dinner once in awhile and this was it. In any case, this casserole was a pleasant surprise. I'd expected something that had more of a cornbread consistency but it was actually very light and fluffy. It definitely wasn't the solid and heavy cornbread that I'd expected. It was easy enough to make that I didn't even have any blunders worth writing about this time! Simple ingredients, quick to mix up, and delicious to eat.
The cornbread casserole was definitely the star of the dinner and will be on our menu, probably with a bit more sophisticated meal, again in the future.
Bon appetit!
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