Skillet Cornbread with Salted Honey Butter

One of my favorite things to make is cornbread. Warm, comforting, and a delightful vehicle for butter, it’s hard not to love it.

Last week I served it with the Smokey Sweet Potato Soup and it made the perfect weeknight dinner.

Growing up, my mom would make cornbread or hoecakes (savory Southern corn pancakes) on cool nights to go along with a bowl of chili. A classic childhood meal.

While cornbread isn’t as easy to find on the west coast as it back home in the south, I’ve been spoiled with fresh, locally grown cornmeal. My friends and incredible farmers, David and Kayta of West County Community Farm have been growing the most beautiful Blue Hopi corn over the years.

Every fall, they invite their CSA members to help harvest before grinding it into cornmeal. Being able to gather with friends and community on chilly mornings in the field is quite a special experience.

Even after hours of harvesting, each time you pull back the dry husks to reveal hues of indigo kernels, it never gets old. Blue Hopi corn is an heirloom variety indigenous to the Hopi people and has been cultivated for thousands of years.

Traditionally dry-farmed in the mesas running down from the Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona, generations upon generations of indigenous knowledge have been poured into this life-giving plant.

Here’s a really wonderful article that goes into depth about the Hopi and their relationship to the land and cultivating corn.

The flavor of Blue Hopi corn is sweet, rich, and surprisingly light. The color itself makes anything you cook with it even more special and this cornbread is no different.

Don’t worry if you don’t have blue cornmeal. I’ve made this recipe plenty of times with yellow cornmeal and it’s delicious.

A few things to keep in mind here, I use a small cast iron, but you could use a standard size and it would just be a little thinner. You don’t need to preheat it either, so pour the batter into the skillet as is.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, simply add a tablespoon of lemon juice to your milk and let it sit for 10 minutes. It will thicken just like the real thing. In my experience, buttermilk is key for making light and moist cornbread, so don’t skip this step. You can also do the same with nut or seed milk if you’re not doing dairy.

To add variation, toss in dried herbs like rosemary, pickled jalapeños, or sweet corn kernals to the batter.

Now, for the butter. Adding a little honey and flake salt really makes it delicious, especially if you like a sweet and savory combo. You can make a bigger batch by doubling the amounts and rolling up in parchment to keep in the fridge.

Its great slathered on toast, on top of oatmeal, or drizzled over roasted winter vegetables. I hope this recipe becomes one you make throughout the seasons and share it with people you love.

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