STOP Putting Sugar in Your Cornbread! Try This Old Southern Way Instead

There's a reason my mother's hand shot out before that spoon of sugar ever touched my cornbread batter, and it had nothing to do with taste. In this one I'm walking you through why real Southern skillet cornbread never had sugar in it, where the sweet, cake-style version actually came from, and why sugar quietly stops your batter from forming that dark, crackling crust in a hot cast iron skillet. Then I hand you my mother's old-fashioned cornbread recipe: cornmeal, buttermilk, one egg, and bacon grease hot enough to sing when the batter hits it. It costs pennies to make and beats anything out of a box, sweet or not.