North America · Volume 34, The Hollow, the Ridge and the Mill Town
Soup Beans and Cornbread
Central Appalachia, United States
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 1 hour 30 · Waiting 8 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 56 sources in the brief
As tradition built it
Soup Beans and Cornbread
Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour 30 minutes, plus an overnight soak.
Ingredients
- 450g dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
- 200g side meat, bacon or a smoked ham hock
- 1 small onion, halved
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- to taste salt, added midway through cooking
- 210g cornmeal, for the cornbread
- 350ml buttermilk, for the cornbread
- 1 egg, for the cornbread
- 4 tbsp bacon grease, for the cornbread
Method
- Drain the beans and cover with fresh water by about 5cm. Add the side meat, onion and garlic.
- Bring to a simmer and cook gently, uncovered, for 45 to 90 minutes, until the beans are tender and the liquor has thickened.
- Season with salt only once the beans are nearly tender, not before.
- For the cornbread, heat a well greased cast iron skillet in a hot oven until the fat is close to smoking, pour in an unsweetened cornmeal batter, and bake until a firm, dark crust forms, about 20 minutes.
- Serve the beans in their potlikker with wedges of the cornbread and, if you like, raw onion or chow-chow on the side.
What a modern chef changes
The same long simmer, engineered rather than left to chance.
Rung 1
Method
- Pressure-cook the beans for 25 minutes at high pressure with the seasoning meat, then reduce the resulting liquor hard in a wide pan afterward, concentrating the potlikker to a glaze rather than a broth, so a small amount does far more work as a sauce.
- Finish the cornbread under a very hot cast iron lid rather than in an open oven, treating the skillet's own thermal mass the way this chapter's technique ladder treats a smoker, so the crust sets almost the instant the batter touches the pan.