What are your Christmas and Thanksgiving traditions?
My family and I have tweaked our holiday feasts to incorporate the traditional, primitive skills that we’ve learned out on our wilderness homestead. For instance, we harvest our meats each fall during hunting season — and there’s nothing better than wild turkey or roast moose!
This year we served our moose with carrots, basmati rice, slivered almonds, and… bacon cornbread. Yes, bacon buttermilk skillet cornbread! Now that’s a tradition we love. 😉
For dessert, we enjoyed a dairy-free pumpkin pie along with vanilla goat milk ice cream — freshly churned in our antique hand-crank ice cream maker!
Bacon Buttermilk Skillet Cornbread
Yes, bacon buttermilk skillet cornbread! A tradition we love.
Ingredients
- 2 cups cornmeal *
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 organic or pastured egg
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 8 to 10 pieces bacon
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Line a cast iron skillet with raw bacon.
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Combine the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
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Pour the cornbread batter on top of the bacon.
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Bake until the top is golden brown.
Recipe Notes
*such as Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Cornmeal.
Will you try this bacon buttermilk skillet cornbread?
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Tammy, that cornbread sounds amazing!! …and gluten free? Bonus!! But the WIN comes with the BACON!
Thanks Patrick!! And I totally AGREE that anything with BACON wins!! The Mountain Man and I both grew up on home smoked meats and we just can’t go without! Blessings my friend!
Congrats on your first post with gnowfglins! I really enjoy reading about your family and this recipe looks delicious! I think anything with bacon just makes it taste that much better! 🙂
Thank you Mary! I am very honored to be a part of Gnowfglins! My family and I LOVE our life and we thoroughly enjoy sharing it with others. I totally agree that you certainly can’t go wrong with bacon and this recipe is wonderful with any meal! I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment and look forward to getting to know you! Blessings my dear…
Oh … My … Goodness! That looks just …. oh, mercy me!!!
Jo just imagine adding some butter to that… 🙂 It is a family favorite and two things I will never give up is butter and bacon! 🙂 So nice to have you stop by Jo. Blessings my dear…
A “most-fine” cornbread and bacon anytime table “fare” Tammy. This is close to the recipe handed down from 4 generations back to my grandmother back in the 1930s. Only difference was my people used a up to a 20″ across by 6+’deep cast iron frying skillet with a heavy rimmed lid and buried it in a charcoal pit heaping coals on top. For a change they used deer strips and sprinkled cracklins on top after greasing with fatback lard useing deer strips instead of hog for a change. My people sre from the Sioux Nation of the Lakota, fine cooks all.
You and yours be well , .
By His grace.
David
David,
Thank you SO much for reaching out and taking the time to share your story. I LOVE the stories of how our ancestors lived. We truly feel we were placed in the wrong era! 🙂 My husband used to take pack trips into the backcountry and did it all including the cooking so we often cook with our kettles and dutch ovens on the open fire as well as using the dutch oven as you described. I truly believe food tastes better in cast iron and on the open fire. There is nothing better than the smell of the fire and enjoying that 1st bite out in the open air. Using lard, game meats and the cracklins is something we enjoy doing as well. In a continuous effort to be more frugal and live more traditionally we are learning new skills daily. There is a great feeling to be had when you are using an old family recipe or an old tool or piece of cast iron – it just connects you to a different time. David I really enjoyed hearing from you and look forward to getting to know you.
Blessings to you and yours my friend!
This post caught my attention immediately! I’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie Christmas Story anthologies to my children and have been thinking a lot about how things used to be. “Ma” would make some kind of little skillet cakes, a stew or roast in the pot over the fire and a few other special dishes from dried and stewed fruits. It’s pretty incredible what those prairie women and now modern mountain women like you can do in the wilderness 🙂 Keep it up!
Good Morning Meagan,
So glad you stopped by and took the time to comment. Isn’t it something to read those types of stories and especially to our children. To share that time and place is special. I have always enjoyed those stories too and to now be living those stories is awing to me! It is an era I feel very close too and one I feel I belong! The women of those times had such spirit and were just amazing to me! I am thankful that people are gaining something from the materials we share – we feel very driven by God to live this life and share it with others. It is extremely rewarding! I LOVE your 3 Christmas Cookie Recipe post on your blog and I have shared that just now in several places. We are very big on the healthy foods and I always love finding new gluten free recipes! So thank you as well. It was a pleasure to get to know you this morning and I look forward to connecting more. Blessings to you and yours!
My goodness, this reminds me so much of my MaMaw! Thank you so much for sharing, and blessings to you and yours!
Thanks Lynn!! You are very welcome. I have fond memories of my grandparent’s and I enjoy greatly the simple reminders of them so I am glad this was one of those simple reminders for you. Blessings as well to you and yours and may your New Year be very blessed!
Hi! I do all my own baking from bread to cookies homemade, gluten free and low gluten for my step sons. I had been looking for a good buttermilk cornbread gluten free of course and found this one! Which looks amazing. I’m actually trying the recipe as I type!
Thanks so much!!
Hi Stephanie
I have to apologize for such a delayed response to your comment, but I wanted to take the time to respond. I hope you enjoyed and if you ever need other gluten free recipes for your sons look me up. My son is on a 100% gluten free diet and I have adjusted ALL our recipes and have hundreds to share. I hope you enjoyed it is one of our favorites.
Blessings to you and yours!
I think this recipe sounds delicious!
I can’t wait to try it and see if it tastes as good as it sounds.
I love reading your pages, on FB & here.
Keep us up to date on all your doings and let us learn from you what we need to know to live a cleaner, better life.
Thanks!
Sharon,
I owe you an apology for such a delayed response, but I wanted to take the time to thank you SO much for you very kind words. It means the world to me and warms my heart to know that I am helping others. That is my goal and also a blessing to me to know that I am successfully doing so.
I hope you have enjoyed this recipe and thank you for following our crazy adventures.
Blessings to you and yours lovely lady!
Tammy, after baking, do you remove the cornbread from skillet, or just serve sliced directly from the pan?
Hi Sydney,
I am such a frugal gal and try to simplify in everything I do so I actually serve this right from the skillet. If you would want to remove it from the skillet to serve it I would recommend really greasing the skillet well with lard or butter… Yummm….
I hope this helps and I hope you have enjoyed.
Blessings to you and yours!
How does the texture of this compare to modern recipes for cornbread that call for 1 cup cornmeal to 1-2 cups flour ??
Hi Carrie,
I am SO sorry – I just noticed your comment and I greatly apologize. What you are referring to is more like a dessert bread – I have a sweet cornbread recipe that is out of this world that fits what you are describing. This bread is more of a solid, textured and tighter bread – more your traditional cornbread recipe. It is really great served fresh on a cold day with some hot soup.
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy. Blessings to you and yours, Tam
First, let me brag on your site. I love it! It’s a great mix of old and new, simple and understandable. One of the differences I like is that some blogs will say one way is the only way. I like your honesty and the awareness that not all things work for all people. It makes this way of life encouraging and not so daunting. Eating healthy is a challenge when you have to rewire your brain and change everything you’ve been taught according to modern day standards. That being said, here is what I have to say about your bacon cornbread. We have always used bacon drippings to flavor almost everything…..from vegetables, to gravy, to spaghetti sauce. It’s the way I was taught to cook. More than half of what we ate growing up had no recipe, we just dumped. You know how that is… dump, taste, add more this or that and taste again until it was just right. Nine times out of ten, a spoon of bacon grease was the final ingredient it needed. Cornbread was no different. We always had our batter ready to go as we were heating the skillet on high. As soon as it was barely smoking and a drop of batter sizzled real good, it was ready. Remove from stove eye and immediately pour in batter…it’ll sure stick if you leave it on the hot eye. I always have enough bacon grease in it that when I pour the batter in, enough comes up around the side that I can carefully spoon and spread across the whole top of cornbread batter and pop it in a 450 degree oven. When nice and brown, out it comes and immediately I put a plate on top, hold tight, and flip it out so it stays nice and crunchy. The only thing I would say is because I use a lot of grease, do this carefully in case there is extra still under the bread. Because it’s so hot when I pour in the batter, it makes it crisp enough that it doesn’t always soak up the grease completely. I have burned my wrist more than once flipping too quickly. Anyway, I have an iron skillet that is older than me (53). It is designated strictly for cornbread and it is so well seasoned, the cornbread comes right out. NO washing, only wipe out with a paper towel while still hot, and then back in the oven it goes. It stays there on the bottom shelf no matter what I’m cooking. Keeps it just the way I want it. Just one more thing to add. Sometimes, as a kid, my mom would put cracklings in the cornbread batter before cooking. The trick was to run them through the blender first…..sounded like you were grinding rocks, but it never seemed to hurt. We’d put probably a half cup of it in, not sure about that, but that sounds about right. The blending process produced very fine pieces of crackling so you didn’t get a mouthful of fat after the bread was cooked and the crackling softened. It just added to that great bacon taste that it was cooked in…..delicious. I’m sure it made the bread more moist, as well. So glad you posted about cooking cornbread this way. When people see how I cook cornbread, they usually raise their eyebrows and think it has to be unhealthy. All the elderly people in my family that cooked traditionally are gone now. Most of my family that’s left still follow modern medicine and believe fats are not healthy. Not me….I’ll take my bacon grease straight. 🙂
Afternoon Lovely Jan,
THANK YOU SO much for sharing this…. I read this to my husband and absolutely LOVED comments and especially your closing sentiments “I’ll take my bacon grease straight”!!
Bacon grease and homemade butter are two things, no matter how healthy I am, that I will never give up!!
So glad you are enjoying what you are reading here and again thank you for taking the time to comment – really enjoyed it!!!
Blessings to you and yours,
Tam
after raising five kids , I feel I could survive any thing .I can almost all our food , I have gathered nuts & wild herbs, pickled beets, cukes ,corn , etc.. made sauerkraut , smoked & rendered. Ive done it all . my family is raised now & I have nine grand kids , & six ggrand kids ..but when its in your blood you cannot stop doin it ….. Thanksgiving has always been out big holiday …Back when I was a kid my Mother never told us it was Christmas because she didn’t have any money to buy us presents … but we survived…. today its another world where kids get stuff they never even ask for … what a shame on their parents to allow this in the name of givin everything to their kids… & what a detachment there is today between kids & parents. Being poor made us stronger & we learned early the desire to work & the responsibility to be on time. Theres nothing worng with havin money & a good life if you can create a healthy balance….I say good luck to the youth of today … God help them if the convience stores went out of business, lost a cell phone or had no access to a computer….. sounds like your doing a good job teaching your family all they need to make it !! Good memories are a good thing.
Hi Tammy, I have just found your site and am enjoying it very much!! I have been watching all of your videos on Youtub. You and your family really intrigue me. We live on 55 ac. in the foothills of No, California. We are truly blessed!! We raise our own beef cows and milk cows Right now I am milking only 2 cows but it will be up to three by this time next year. I make all our own dairy products and feel very blessed to have the strength to do this. Like you, I also try to make everything from scratch. And now this winter I have chosen to learn how to cook on our old fisher wood stove! I told the family get prepared and hang on while I accomplish this new task. All this to ask you if you could make this cornbread on the top of the wood stove and if so, how would you go about doing it? I so want to learn to bake bread,, biscuits, cookies, cakes, etc. on the wood stove. Any pointers you can hand down I would be very thankful for. I pray that you and yours have Blessed Thanksgiving.