How To Make Your Cornbread Actually Taste Like Corn - Exclusive
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Though regular cornbread can be delicious, there's no denying that it doesn't taste much like corn. It's made with cornmeal, but if you're expecting the delicious taste of sweet corn, you'll be disappointed. That's exactly how pastry chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur Nancy Silverton felt about standard cornbread recipes. As she told Tasting Table in an exclusive interview, "When I looked at and analyzed what I didn't like about cornbread, it was that it never tasted like corn ... To me, a cornbread, given the name, should have sort of a corn flavor to it at least."
That meant that when she was developing the cornbread recipe in her latest book, "The Cookie That Changed My Life," she took an innovative approach to incorporating fresh corn. Silverton uses fresh corn on the cob to make a sort of concentrate by "creaming the corn, straining out the natural milkiness that comes out of that corn, then heating it up and turning it into a pudding-like consistency with a whole lot of flavor." Blending this mixture into her cornbread batter gave Silverton the taste she'd been looking for.
You'll need a corn creamer
You may be asking yourself, "What does she mean by 'creaming the corn?'" Despite the name, the recipe doesn't call for whipping up a batch of homemade creamed corn. Rather, Nancy Silverton is referring to stripping the kernels from the cob with a special tool called a corn creamer.
A corn creamer consists of a long, channeled base with a shredding blade set into it. As you drag the corn across the base, the blade scrapes off all the kernels easily, leaving you with a bare cob. But the tool doesn't just make removing kernels easy — it also extracts the corn milk from the cob, giving you more corn flavor and a creamier texture. This corn milk is what gives Silverton's cornbread its unique taste. As a bonus, if you invest in a corn creamer, it will make preparing creamed corn at home easier as well (this is what it was first designed to do). Simply cook the corn kernels and milk with a little butter, and you'll have a delicious side dish.
"The Cookie That Changed My Life" is available in bookstores and from Amazon now.