Discussing one’s grandmother in the context of food writing is gauche. But it is impossible and borderline disrespectful for me to talk about cornbread—especially this cornbread—without mentioning Jewel. Our Browned Butter Skillet Cornbread is shockingly similar to the one I grew up eating at her house in Aberdeen, Mississippi. It’s so good—so correct—it almost makes me angry.

Maybe “angry” isn’t quite fair. The feeling is more akin to the culinary version of cute aggression. I’m delighted, so delighted I’m overcome with the urge to destroy the source of my delight. But eating is its own type of destruction, so it all works out.

Unlike most grandmothers, Jewel hated cooking, and unlike most Southerners, she did not own a cast iron skillet. She used a cake pan to make her cornbread—it was easier on the wrists—and she didn’t just grease the pan with fat. She flooded the pan with bacon grease, then let it hang out in the oven while she mixed the batter, which she would then pour directly into the puddle of sizzling, salty pork fat. This created a savory, well-browned, almost fried crust, a crust I rarely encounter on other cornbread, especially cornbread made outside of the South. This cornbread has such a crust, and that’s just one of its charms.

You don’t need wheat flour

This is cornbread, not corn and wheat bread, and it was that lack of all-purpose flour that got me excited about this recipe in the first place. A cornmeal-only approach gives it a truer flavor and texture. Unlike cakier, Northern-style cornbreads, it’s devoid of gluten. It gets its structure from a couple of eggs, and its tangy flavor and moist, crumbly crumb from 2 cups of buttermilk.

Jewel always used self-rising cornmeal, as measuring tiny bits of chemical leavening agents was antithetical to her whole “do as little as possible” cooking philosophy, but this is a case where the extra bit of effort pays off. We take a more exacting approach, measuring the fine cornmeal by mass and adding precise amounts of both baking powder and baking soda—the former is a self-contained leavening system, and latter reacts with the acid in the buttermilk, giving this cornbread almost double the height of my grandmother’s.

Fry the crust in nutty brown butter

This cornbread is not made with puddles of bacon grease, but it does contain a whole stick of browned butter—6 tablespoons go into the batter, the rest is left in a puddle in the skillet. It functions much like Jewel’s grease, ensuring the pan is coated in a generous slick of hot fat—hot enough to effectively fry the batter the moment it hits the butter, creating a dark, golden-brown crust that shatters under the knife. And while the cake pan served Jewel fine, a cast iron skillet is the more reliable option. Once hot, cast iron retains that heat like a dream, ensuring the crust is evenly and consistently browned with nice, straight sides.

Browning the butter also gives it flavor. It boils off the water, causing the milk solids to brown via the Maillard reaction, which gives the fat an intoxicatingly nutty aroma and flavor—a perfect complement to the cornmeal. It all makes for a pleasant sensory experience, one that’s quite chef-y. The batter billows up the sides of the skillet when it meets the beurre noisette, and the aroma of toasted corn and toffee-scented, almost caramelized dairy fills the kitchen. Once it starts to bubble on the edges, it’s ready for the oven.

About that sugar

I will admit my stomach sank a little when I read the words “just 2 teaspoons sugar.” Southern cornbread is famously savory—if you want sweet cornbread, just give it a drizzle of honey. But before you come for my Southern card, be assured that this cornbread is not what anyone could call “sweetened.” The tiny bit of sugar isn’t noticeable in the final product; I would not know it was in there if I had not added it myself. It merely rounds out the flavors, playing off the tang of the buttermilk while intensifying the corniness of the cornmeal.

It’s my platonic ideal of cornbread, savory enough to eat with supper, but neutral enough to transform into dessert with a heavy swipe of honey butter. And if you want to get really Southern with it, you can crumble it into a glass of cold buttermilk. That’s what Jewel would do.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.