Suc's Jalapeno Cornbread

So a friend of mine was gracious enough to have me over for some wonderful eats the other day. He put together some awesome slow cooked, dry rubbed brisket, slow cooked chicken breasts, coleslaw and this wicked cornbread. Everything was full of flavour and was just awesome, but this cornbread blew me away.

I haven't had good cornbread since I was in San Antonio, some 6 years ago. This cornbread was right on par. Nice sweet flavour, then a bite of chopped jalapenos hits you smack in the face. The other element that was a pleasant surprise was a slight salty taste when you first bite in. The recipe below will clearly illustrate the flavours and how they all compliment each other. This cornbread goes awesome with your typical grilled food, but more so with smoked meats and slaw.

Ingredients:
1/4 pound butter
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup of pickled chopped jalapenos (or fresh)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375F. Ideally, a deep cast iron skillet would be best for this corn bread, so if you have one, grease it lightly with canola oil. If you don't have a cast iron skillet, use a ceramic type square pan and grease it with canola oil. IMPORTANT: Lightly salt the pan all around, this will give the slightly salty taste when you first bite into the cornbread.

Melt butter in large skillet or in a microwave safe bowl. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Stir in the chopped Jalapenos so they are well blended into the batter. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Personally, the finger poke in the middle of the bread test works best since it shows the bounce of the bread.

Let cool and then cut and serve with all sorts of smoked meat and other tasty fixin's. Side note, a nice cold beer goes great with this as well!

Bon Appetit!