You can make traditional cornbread in your kitchen oven, or you can go outside and get some fresh air and smoke the perfect Skillet Cornbread on a Big Green Egg no matter what the weather.
The secret ingredient is the cast iron skillet, as they say at Lodge Cast Iron. That’s the company that famously makes the 10 1/2-inch skillet with handle that I picked up recently from Lodge’s foundry in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, home to the National Cornbread Festival every April. Cast iron is so easy, whether you’re searing a steak, makin’ bacon or smoking cornbread like they do.
While in the Lodge store, I also grabbed several bags of cornbread mix in different styles. That’s the most fun thing about cornbread or maize, and one of the great American traditions going back centuries. The sky’s the limit for recipe variations. I’d never made cornbread on a Big Green Egg kamado ceramic cooker, but the third try was the charm as we settled on a slight variation of Lodge’s True Southern recipe and spiced it up with a couple of large jalapeno peppers.
It was all a matter of timing and using indirect heat. The first batch was Sweet Spot but without the kick, and the EGG got too hot over the open flame. The second was what we called Millet Skillet Cornbread, drizzling honey and scattering millet seeds on the top — tasty but still with a blackened crust. The third go-round was perfection, and it tasted just as good the second and third days. You can use a bag mix or shop for individual ingredients.
Why You Should Try This Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread
You’ll savor the perfectly crisp crust and the moist delicacy inside!
Not many things in life can match the satisfaction of taking a crackling-hot cast iron skillet out of the Big Green Egg, sitting it on a kitchen hot pad or trivet, and then removing the first triangular piece to reveal perfection with a golden and crumbly crust. Baking cornbread in the BGE indirect heat smoker is easy once you’ve done it a few times, because you become your own expert on Big Green Egg cooking times and temperature management. This one cooked for a half-hour.
There’s always room for a cast iron skillet and other food.
The Large Big Green Egg is the most common of the brand’s seven ceramic grill sizes, with a grid diameter of 18 1/4 inches wide or 262 square inches. So if you want to bake cornbread CI style, you still have plenty of room on the grid for meat and vegetables, or maybe a container of soaked hickory or apple wood chips if you want to infuse more smoky flavor. (Big Green Egg 100% Natural Oak and Hickory Lump Charcoal will give you some of that anyway.) The portable MiniMax Big Green Egg is another favorite, and for that one you can use a C.I. skillet without a handle. For even more flexibility on a larger EGG, buy the Big Green Egg EGGspander and you’ll be able to go vertical with up to three tiers of cooking surface and 35 possible setup combinations. See: 12 must-have Big Green Egg accessories.
Two thousand reasons you can’t beat the heat of kamado cooking.
Big Green Egg has been around for a half-century with some serious new competition from Kamado Joe, but the famous oval shape of their smokers is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Qin Dynasty from 221-206 BCE. The same people who started the Great Wall of China also started using clay pots for cooking, allowing for consistently even temperature distribution and versatility that was perfected over the ensuing two millennia. Just start the fire, bring it to your target temp, and that swirling heat will stay rock-steady while the skillet is inside with your cornbread mix. Without an evil emperor ordering you around.
How to Cook Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread on Your Big Green Egg (Step by Step)
1. Clean and start Big Green Egg. Shake out natural lump charcoal leftover from previous cook and clear any ash with removal tool and shovel. Add more BBQ lump charcoal to rim of fire box, insert 2-3 squares of SpeediLight, and ignite those with a simple butane starter. Leave dome open for first 7-10 minutes so fire is established.
2. For indirect heat cooking, carefully sit ceramic convEGGtor plate setter in position with legs up. Make sure one of the three legs is front-center on EGG in vertical line with external temperature gauge, so that device is free from direct heat and will read accurately. Use Big Green Egg grid lift tool to put cooking grid back in place.
3. Place two large jalapeno peppers on grid and close dome, opening top and bottom vents just enough to maintain 325 temperature range. Remove jalapeno peppers once charred.
4. Place empty skillet into Big Green Egg and close dome.
5. In kitchen, slice peppers down center, remove seeds, then dice.
6. Empty contents of dry cornbread mix into large bowl.
How to Cook Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread on Your Big Green Egg (Step by Step)- Cont.
7. Mix wet ingredients thoroughly in regular-sized bowl with a whisk, then combine with diced peppers into dry mix.
8. Open dome, add 1/4 stick of butter to hot skillet, swirl to coat and melt. Then pour cornbread mixture into skillet and close dome to smoke for 30 minutes. Do not use skillet lid.
9. If you have a Big Green Egg table nest or sideboard EGG Mates, prep for finish by placing a cutting board on that surface and sit a hot pad on the board.
10. Test cornbread with toothpick or knife blade. If it comes out clean, you’re done. Remove skillet, using insulated handle and/or heat-resistant BBQ mitt. Sit it on hot pad. It’s heavy with a short handle, so carry cutting board into the kitchen with door assistance.
11. With skillet on hot pad or trivet, cut cornbread from side to side so it makes 8 generous wedges, or adjust depending on crew size. Use cake spatula to remove. Resist urge to flip hot and weighty skillet over. Keep lid on skillet after serving.
12. Serve wedges warm and enjoy with chili, turkey, just about anything.
13. While EGG is still warm, give cooking grid a once-over with a safe scrubber that doesn’t leave metal fibers, so it’s clean and ready for next backyard BBQ. Close top and bottom vents and your Big Green Egg will extinguish itself in about 15 minutes. Cover barbecue station once everything is cool.
Ingredients
- 1 16-oz package Lodge Skillet Cornbread Mix True Southern
- 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1/4 stick unsalted butter
- 3 large eggs
- 2 large jalapeno peppers
Variations and Substitutions
- Instead of a pre-packaged cornbread mix, use your own dry ingredients and experiment. After all, the word “or” is in “cornbread” because you can do it this way or that. Keep it as WW-low as possible . . . or try it with creamed corn and sour cream like this old-fashioned Henry Lodge Skillet Cornbread recipe, made by the wife of the former cast iron company’s CEO.
- You can use milk instead of buttermilk and save a bit on calories, but at least for True Southern cornbread, nothing beats the taste with real buttermilk inside.
- Substitute a tablespoon of canola oil instead of butter when adding to hot skillet just before adding mixture. If you do this, that extra pat of butter on top of your finished cornbread is a little more acceptable.
- For more jalapeno heat, keep jalapeno seeds. As a general rule for this recipe, one large jalapeno is mild, two is medium, three is Mexico spicy.
- Again, this was the third try at making the perfect Skillet Cornbread recipe, and we’ve got it down pat now that the timing is all set. The first batch was True Southern but without the kick, and the EGG got too hot. The second was what we called Millet Skillet Cornbread, drizzling honey and scattering millet seeds on the top — tasty but with a blackened crust. The third go-round was perfection, and it tasted just as good the second and third days.
Tips and Tricks
- There’s no window on a Big Green Egg, so do your best to minimize the number of times you open the dome and release heat. As the saying goes: “If you’re lookin’ then you ain’t cookin’
- Always “burp” the dome first when opening a hot EGG, by opening slightly 2-3 times to avoid gush of hot smoke. You don’t want singed eyebrows.
- Use a pair of disposable nitrile grilling gloves when starting the lump charcoal as well as when handling food for the Big Green Egg.
- Big Green Egg cooks in any weather, but raindrops that trickle in through your daisy-wheel vents on top are annoyances that can suppress the heat and even pock-mark your cornbread. Upgrade to the newer rEGGulator and then you can attach a handy rain cap.
- After you remove the cornbread, you’ll have plenty of roaring fire left just in case you want to pop any other food like chicken breasts and pork chops onto the EGG for the upcoming week before you close the vents. This is a good time to prep some meals for the week. If not, close the vents and it will just mean less charcoal left over for your next cook.
