Cornbread is a highly underrated side dish. You can whip up this deliciously sweet and moist homemade cornbread recipe with just a few pantry staples, and it makes a perfect side dish for breakfast, lunch, or dinner! Serve it slathered with butter at breakfast, crumbled into your soup or chili at lunch, or as a side with your collard greens and pork chops for dinner. It’s inexpensive, comforting, and seriously easy to make! So toss that boxed mix and let me show you how it’s done for real. ;)
Originally posted 9-5-15, updated 3-6-17
What to Serve with Cornbread
Cornbread is a great side dish to go with any thick and hearty soup, stew, or chili. The cornbread can be dipped or crumbled into the saucy stews, where it absorbs all the flavor. I love it with Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Chili, Weeknight Black Bean Chili, Glazed Pork Chops, Mexican Red Lentil Stew. This cornbread recipe also goes great with eggs for breakfast!
Cornbread Add-Ins
To make your cornbread a little more fun, consider stirring in some add-ins, like cheddar cheese, roasted corn kernels, diced green chiles, chili powder, or jalapeños, blueberries, or even some cooked sausage!
What Kind of Baking Dish to Use
While this glass pie dish is my favorite dish to bake my cornbread in, you can use just about any baking dish. This amount of batter would fit well in an 8×8 casserole dish, or a 10-inch cast iron skillet (although you should preheat the skillet as the oven preheats). Glass, ceramic, and cast iron work best, but you can also use metal baking dishes.
Make Corn Muffins Instead
Yes, you can pour this batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. Bake at the same temperature for 16-18 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. This recipe will make about 10 corn muffins (see step by step photos below).
Easy Homemade Cornbread Recipe
Servings 8Ingredients
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal ($0.24)
- 1 cup all-purpose flour ($0.15)
- 1/4 cup sugar ($0.20)
- 4 tsp baking powder ($0.24)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1 cup milk ($0.31)
- 1 large egg ($0.27)
- 1/4 cup cooking oil ($0.08)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate, cast iron skillet, or 8x8 casserole dish with non-stick spray (or butter for more flavor).
- In a large bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until evenly combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, and oil.
- Pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just until everything is moist. Avoid over stirring. It's okay if there are a few lumps.
- Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. Cut into 8 pieces and serve.
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Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Cornbread from Scratch – Step by Step Photos
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate or 8×8 inch casserole dish with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, stir together 1 cup yellow cornmeal, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 4 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Make sure these are really well stirred together.
In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 cup milk, 1 large egg, and 1/4 cup cooking oil.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients…
And stir just until everything is moistened. You don’t want to over stir the batter because that can develop the gluten in the flour and make the end product a little rubbery, so it’s okay if there are a few lumps. No need to stir until everything is completely smooth.
Spread the batter into your prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. The exact baking time may vary slightly based on your dish and your oven.
The top will crack a little and look all delicious.
Or you can pour the batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. You’ll get about 10 corn muffins.
Bake the muffins at the same temperature, for 16-18 minutes, or until they’re golden brown on top.
I’d like to make this for a friend who can’t have sugar, but can have honey/maple syrup. Would it work to use 1/4 cup of one of those in place of 1/2 cup table sugar? Would you change any of the other liquid ratios to compensate? Thank you!!
Hi, there! Since we haven’t tested this recipe with honey or maple syrup, I can’t promise the results will be equally successful with that substitution. However, you can definitely try it. In theory, it should work out just fine. I would suggest 1/4 cup of honey (which is the correct conversion) over maple syrup since it doesn’t have such a distinct flavor. We also have a different recipe for Hot Honey Cornbread that I can promise will be successful! (Omitting the red pepper flakes won’t affect the outcome!) Here’s the link: https://www.budgetbytes.com/hot-honey-cornbread/
~Marion :)
The Cornbread is the best ever! It rose beautifully!!!! It was very appealing to look at and absolutely the best ever tasting!!
THANK YOU
I’ve been using this recipe for years—making various substitutions and add-ins. Here recently we’ve swapped out the regular cornmeal for “unicorn cornmeal” from the marsh hen mill near us and buttermilk for the milk. This makes the cornbread pink from the type of corn used and the acidity from the buttermilk! It’s been a weekly staple for about 2 months.
Great recipe for cornbread.
Happy New Year. We had this cornbread tonight with blackeyed peas and greens soup. I subbed melted butter for the cooking oil and left out the sugar (which does NOT belong in cornbread. Fight me. ;-). I also put a TB of butter in my iron skillet and preheated it inthe oven before adding the batter. It came out crisp and browned on the bottom, moist and crumbly on top. I had some green chili hot honey from Santa Fe that I served with it. Deee-lish.
This is so good, and SO easy! I’ve made it twice this week – the test batch (which did beautifully in an 8×8 casserole dish) disappeared within a couple of hours, and the second batch was a big hit at a potluck. It was still moist on the inside and crispy on the outside, traveled well, and took less than half an hour from start to finish. This is my kind of recipe!
I also experimented with using gluten-free flour (Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Baking Flour) and lactose-free milk, which both came out great. I might decrease the sugar by a squidge the next time I use lactose-free milk, since it’s already pretty sweet. (Unless, of course, you like your cornbread plenty sweet ;) )
My old recipe. It’s wonderful and yes, so easy. Thank you
Looking for recipes for one and two persons. Also, how to preserve vegetables, meat, poultry and fish.
When to use bread or all purpose flour. Tks and God Bless.
Vic
Hi Vic- If you want to prepare any of our recipes for just two people, just change the number of servings in the recipe card. We don’t generally do much preservation. As far as when to use bread flour VS AP, we usually call out the type of four you should be working with within each recipe ingredient list. Is there a particular recipe you want to substitute the flour called for with bread flour? XOXO -Monti
Thank you for sharing the recipe. I’m no cook now baker but I had a bunch. I simply added an extra xl egg to get more protein. The result was great. The texture is sponge like. It does not crumble in my hands. I would share a picture if I could figure out how to attach it.
That’s how my grandmother used to make cornbread from scratch
I tried this easy recipe tonight. It looks very good but taste bitter then I could imagine. I made slight change: half a cup of regular flour and half a cup almond flour and almond milk with regular milk. Unfortunately baking soda didn’t properly mixed well with almond milk and now it’s not edible.any thoughts anyone?
The recipe calls for baking powder. If you used baking soda, then that’s the first issue. That will effect taste & the rise of the bread. Also, when trying to replace almond flour for other ingredients, it is not always a 1 to 1 ratio.
So you made changes to the recipe and then used the wrong item and you’re complaining because the “easy” recipe is not edible anymore? Brilliant.
Your rude comment isn’t needed. This is a happy page. If you do not have anything nice to say — scroll on.
I have completely stopped buying cornbread mix since I found this recipe. It is just as easy and SO much tastier (I find boxed cornbread mix too sweet) and healthier. This and chili (also homemade including the chili mix) is a favourite family dinner!
This is such an easy recipe and it turns out wonderfully every time!!
Sorry, forgot to add the stars!
I made this tonight exactly per instructions. While the flavor was good, it was very dry…crumbled easier than I wanted. Can you suggest a fix?
You might want to invest in an oven thermometer to ensure that your oven is cooking at the right temperature. Most ovens are not. You could also add an oven-proof ramekin with water in it to your oven. It will release steam as the cornbread cooks and should help with dryness. XOXO -Monti
I added an extra egg. It made the texture spongy instead of crumbly.