Oklahoma · Main
Oklahoma Cornbread and Beans
- Intermediate
- 3 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 500g dried pinto beans, soaked
- 1 ham hock
- 1 onion, halved
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp black pepper
- Salt
- For cornbread: 250g cornmeal, 60g flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 2 eggs, 400ml buttermilk, 3 tbsp bacon fat
- Chopped onion to serve
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the drained beans with the ham hock, onion, bay, and pepper 2-3 hours until creamy and the liquor is thick. Salt at the end. 180 min
- Pull the hock, shred the meat, and return it.
- Heat the bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet at 220C, mix the cornbread batter, pour it in, and bake 20-25 min. 25 min
- Serve the beans in bowls with cornbread and raw onion.
- Crumble the cornbread into the pot liquor to eat.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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