White bread has its place in the barbecue world. Sandwiches usually call for hamburger buns straight from the cellophane (but see the corn cake recipe on page 90), and some well-known barbecue places offer buns or sliced loaf bread with a barbecue plate. Rib joints in particular seem to like sliced bread since it can double as a napkin. But there’s a reason that visiting Union troops called the South the “Cornfederacy”: Especially with pork—pork barbecue included—the usual bread has been made from corn. Here are three varieties, from the most ancient to one that was paired with barbecue in living memory.
In eastern North Carolina, some old-fashioned places like the Skylight Inn and Bum’s in Ayden serve their barbecue with a thin, crispy rectangle of cornpone, the way folks down east have always done. They used to make their pone with fat from the hogs they cooked, but today’s hogs are too lean, so they use lard. You should, too. If you don’t, you might as well not bother.
This is about what you get in Ayden.
SERVES 8–10
4 cups finely ground white cornmeal
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup lard
4 cups water, or more if needed
Preheat the oven to 500°. Melt the lard in a 9 × 13-inch baking pan in the preheating oven. Combine the cornmeal and salt in a bowl, and stir in enough water to make a batter thick enough that you have to spread it a bit, like cake batter. When the oven reaches 500°, remove the pan and add most of the melted lard to the batter, leaving some in the pan. Stir the batter well and pour it into the heated pan. Lower the heat to 450° and bake for about an hour.
It’s not clear whether Warner Stamey, a barbecue entrepreneur in Greensboro, North Carolina, was the first to serve hushpuppies with barbecue or just popularized the combination, but until he did whatever he did, sometime in the 1950s or so, these little deep-fried doughballs had rarely been found apart from fried fish. But Stamey’s innovation certainly caught on in the Tar Heel State. Although some old-timers still prefer white-bread rolls (Stamey’s grandson’s restaurant still offers them as an alternative) and real old-timers prefer cornpone, most North Carolinians now regard hushpuppies as an integral part of their barbecue tradition.
O.T.’s Barbecue in Apex is long gone, but its memory lingers on, as does its hushpuppy recipe in this adaption. If you prefer a savory version, leave out the sugar (or reduce it by half) and add 1 medium onion, chopped fine.
MAKES 2–3 DOZEN
2 cups self-rising cornmeal
1 cup self-rising flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 large egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk, plus more as needed
Lard for frying (peanut oil, if you insist)
Sift the dry ingredients together. Stir in the egg and milk, adding more milk if needed for a firm but workable batter. Heat the lard to 375°. Using a tablespoon, drop walnut-to-golf-ball-sized blobs of batter into the lard. Fry only a few at a time to golden brown, turning if necessary. Drain them on a paper towel.
Up a notch in sophistication from pone in the spectrum of Southern cornbreads are these fried batter cakes, which add egg, milk, and baking powder to the basic hoecake. They are, in fact, just cornmeal pancakes, and any left over are good with butter and sorghum for breakfast. They’re ubiquitous in the South, but in Middle Tennessee and (especially) Kentucky they’re often served with barbecue, either on the side or as the top and bottom of a barbecue sandwich (with sauce and slaw).
If you want to replicate the corn cakes served at most barbecue places, use whole milk and regular grocery-store cornmeal, but buttermilk and stone-ground meal do make for a superior product. (If you don’t have buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon each of lemon juice and cider vinegar to 2 1/2 cups of whole milk, let the mixture curdle, and you’ll have enough for this recipe.) You can use melted butter instead of bacon grease, but your flavor will suffer. Some northern Kentuckians use yellow cornmeal instead of white, but they’re practically Yankees, and probably put sugar in their cornbread, too.
MAKES 24–28 CAKES
2 cups white stone-ground cornmeal
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons bacon drippings, melted
Approximately 2 cups buttermilk (as needed)
1/4 cup cooking oil or lard
Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Stir in the eggs and drippings, then enough buttermilk to produce the consistency of pancake batter. Heat the oil or lard in a skillet or griddle over medium heat and spoon on 2-tablespoon batches of batter. When bubbles on top begin to burst, lift the cake to check: When the underside is brown, turn it and cook the other side.