You've Been Making Cornbread WRONG Your Whole Life — Try These 45 Appalachian Tricks

🔗 Grandma never wrote hers down, so I finally did. All 118 plus much more. Get em before they're gone: https://www.opalrowe.com Opal Rowe pulls up a chair and counts down forty-five old Appalachian ways with a pan of cornbread — the plain mountain ways her mama and her granny baked it long before a blue box of Jiffy ever sat on a store shelf. Before the count even starts she hands you one for free: scald your dry meal with boiling water before another thing touches it, and the dry, crumbly cornbread that falls to dust the second you cut it is fixed for good. Then she works her way down from forty-five to one — real buttermilk and bacon grease, the screaming-hot cast-iron skillet, the no-sugar truth her mama swore by, cracklin bread and spoonbread and pot likker, and the hard-times suppers that held a mountain family together on almost nothing. And the whole time there's that old tin setting up in her kitchen cupboard, kept going sixty years, that she's never told a living soul what's in. She finally lifts the lid — and tells you. In this one, Opal covers: • Scald your meal with boiling water — the fix for dry, crumbly cornbread, given away before the count starts • Real buttermilk and bacon grease, a screaming-hot cast-iron skillet, and the no-sugar truth about real mountain cornbread • The old breads most folks forgot: ashcake and corn pone, cracklin bread, spoonbread, hush puppies, and cush from the leftovers • Pot likker, tomato gravy, sorghum and butter, and cornbread crumbled in cold buttermilk for a hot night • That old tin she's kept sixty years up in the cupboard — what's really in it, held back till number two Come set with us a minute down in the comments — tell Opal where you're watching from, and what your people call their cornbread where you come from, and who it was that taught you at the stove: a mama, a mawmaw, or somebody else's. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Cornbread on the Table — and a Free Fix 2:14 No Sugar, Not One Spoonful 3:06 Real Lard or Bacon Grease, Never Oil 3:54 Real Stone-Ground Meal 4:45 No Flour at All 5:33 Scald Your Meal 6:26 Real Buttermilk, Never Sweet Milk 7:18 A Screaming-Hot Skillet 8:00 Test Your Own Soda 8:50 Cast Iron and Nothing Else 9:53 White Meal or Yellow 10:46 Take the Chill off the Buttermilk 11:28 Dry Meal in the Hot Fat 12:22 One Skillet, Never Any Soap 13:09 Beat the Egg Hard First 13:53 Don't Overmix the Batter 14:40 In the Pan the Second Soda Hits 15:35 Go Light on the Leavening 16:35 Plain Meal, Mix Your Own 17:23 Judge It by Smell and Sound 18:24 Test It in More Than One Spot 19:11 Bake It Hot and Fast 19:57 Let It Rest Before You Cut 20:49 Ashcake Baked in the Coals 21:45 Corn Pone, Shaped by Hand 22:51 Hoecake on a Bare Griddle 23:45 Cracklin Bread 24:41 Spoonbread, Soft as Custard 25:43 Cornmeal Mush, Fried Next Morning 26:48 Cornmeal Dodgers in the Beans 27:45 Hush Puppies at the Fish Fry 28:37 Cush from Leftover Cornbread 29:34 Cornbread in Cold Buttermilk 30:30 Cornbread and Soup Beans 31:24 Pot Likker Over a Wedge 32:15 Tomato Gravy on a Slice 33:24 Honey and Butter, Straight From the Oven 34:16 Sorghum and Butter in a Hot Wedge 35:26 Stale Cornbread for the Dressing 36:25 Keep It on the Counter, Not the Icebox 37:23 Cornbread and Sweet Milk 38:19 The Heel of the Pan 39:14 The Skillet Handed Down Three Generations 40:15 The Poorest Supper We Ever Set Down To 41:26 The Old Tin She Kept From You — Revealed 42:39 The Piece for Whoever Needed It Worst