Recipe for cornbread with fresh corn and herbs

In the South, folks like their iced tea sweet and their cornbread savory. Here in New England, we take our iced tea with lemon, and we love our cornbread sweet and cakey. This cornbread with fresh corn and herbs from my garden is more in the style of a Southern cornbread, the kind you eat with chili or barbecue. Although the recipe calls for fresh corn, if you live in a place like New England, with a very short corn season, go ahead and use frozen organic corn kernels. You can freeze leftover cornbread, and use it to stuff a chicken or turkey, make croutons, thicken a soup or stew, or make breadcrumbs. This cornbread bakes in a standard square baking pan, and you can make it, start to finish, in 30 minutes.

Cornbread with fresh corn and herbs

From the pantry, you'll need: all-purpose unbleached flour, yellow cornmeal, granulated sugar, baking soda, canola oil, egg, fresh herbs (optional: powdered buttermilk).

Recipe adapted from Cookling Light Quick Baking, a magazine special issue. Makes 9-12 large squares.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp fresh black pepper
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 large egg
1/2 tsp minced chives
1-1/2 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup fresh corn kernels (approx. 2 ears of fresh corn), or defrosted frozen corn kernels
Baking spray

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray an 8-inch square pan with baking spray and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, salt and pepper. Stir with a whisk to mix well.

In another mixing bowl, combine buttermilk, canola oil, egg, herbs and corn kernels. Stir well, then pour this mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir until just moist (do not overmix, or the cornbread will be tough), and pour the batter into the prepared pan. With a rubber spatula, spread the batter to all corners of the pan.

Bake at 350F for 25 minutes, or until the cornbread is lightly browned and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Test with a toothpick in the center of the pan; if it comes out clean, the cornbread is done.

Let the cornbread cool in the pan, on a wire rack, for 5-10 minutes. Cut into squares, and serve with butter.

[Printer-friendly recipe.]

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Rhode Island white corn and green chile cheese muffins
Blue corn muffins
Polenta with wild mushroom ragout
Polenta, squash and cheese loaf
West Bay jonnycakes

Other recipes that use these pantry ingredients:
Caramelized onion and goat cheese cornbread, from Smitten Kitchen
Skillet cornbread, from The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Jalapeño cheddar cornbread, from Macheesmo
Gluten-free vanilla cornbread, from Gluten-Free Goddess
Potato-stuffed cornbread, from eCurry

Cornbread with fresh corn and herbs

From the pantry, you'll need: all-purpose unbleached flour, yellow cornmeal, granulated sugar, baking soda, canola oil, egg, fresh herbs (optional: powdered buttermilk).

Recipe adapted from Cookling Light Quick Baking, a magazine special issue. Makes 9-12 large squares.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp fresh black pepper
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 large egg
1/2 tsp minced chives
1-1/2 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup fresh corn kernels (approx. 2 ears of fresh corn), or defrosted frozen corn kernels
Baking spray

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray an 8-inch square pan with baking spray and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, salt and pepper. Stir with a whisk to mix well.

In another mixing bowl, combine buttermilk, canola oil, egg, herbs and corn kernels. Stir well, then pour this mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir until just moist (do not overmix, or the cornbread will be tough), and pour the batter into the prepared pan. With a rubber spatula, spread the batter to all corners of the pan.

Bake at 350F for 25 minutes, or until the cornbread is lightly browned and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Test with a toothpick in the center of the pan; if it comes out clean, the cornbread is done.

Let the cornbread cool in the pan, on a wire rack, for 5-10 minutes. Cut into squares, and serve with butter.

[Printer-friendly recipe.]

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Rhode Island white corn and green chile cheese muffins
Blue corn muffins
Polenta with wild mushroom ragout
Polenta, squash and cheese loaf
West Bay jonnycakes

Other recipes that use these pantry ingredients:
Caramelized onion and goat cheese cornbread, from Smitten Kitchen
Skillet cornbread, from The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Jalapeño cheddar cornbread, from Macheesmo
Gluten-free vanilla cornbread, from Gluten-Free Goddess
Potato-stuffed cornbread, from eCurry

Comments

Cornbread with thyme, what a wonderful combination! Sounds perfectly delicious for a Labor Day BBQ.

Mmmm...I love corn bread with kernels!

Looks beautiful, Lydia. I haven't made a cornbread with fresh corn in a long time. You have inspired me!

Deb, I love the combination of corn and thyme (well, I love thyme and anything!), so it was a natural for this recipe.

Kathy, same here. Love the texture.

Karina, cornbread just seems like a natural for weekend barbecues. Which reminds me that I'd love to have to BBQ this weekend.

Still fresh corn season -- I am going to try this one!

Always good to freeze corn from fresh in-season corn-on-the-cob to make a recipe like this in say...January!!

Mary, corn season will be over all too soon, won't it? That makes me sad.

Carol, great advice for all of us who live in the Northeast, where corn season is short. How do you freeze it?

I'm going to miss corn season, but I know I can still make this lovely cornbread when the weather gets cooler with frozen corn - perfect with a bowl of chili!

I bake mine in an iron skillet, it has to be a well-used well-seasoned iron skillet; I heat the skillet on the stove with some butter in it, just until the butter is melted I use a paper towel to spread the butter around the skillet, pour in the batter, and pop it the oven.

1 of 2ways: 1. leftover cooked corn on the cob from dinner (sometimes eyes are bigger than stomachs)is stripped of the corn and frozen in a plastic container or freezer bag.Great just quick defrost and serve or use in recipes. 2. For the purists among us... "blanche" the stripped ears (not fully cooking) strip and freeze. This gives more of a frozen "raw" corn kernals. Or you can blanch and freeze the cobs to have corn on the cob in the winter. But honestly I don't put too much effort into it - I fall into category 1 most times.
Unless you get all "martha" and spread the kernels out on sheet pan before freezing -the kernals will be like in a giant "block" which you can just break off chunks from. The "martha" method will give you frozen individual kernels to be bagged and stored in the freezer.