Green Salad with Cornbread Croutons

Hello folks, and welcome back to the All Things Southern kitchen. Tell me, what do you do with leftover cornbread? (I mean, besides crumbling it in a nice glass of milk!) Why, you make Cornbread Croutons– that’s what! Let me show you how to produce a bit of magic from day old cornbread!

“Green Salad with Cornbread Croutons”

6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1-2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

The first thing you’ll need to know is how to make scratch cornbread, so I’ll back up and start there. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and lightly grease your cast iron skillet with butter. Next, we’ll take a large bowl, and mix a cup each of cornmeal and all-purpose flour, with a couple tablespoons of sugar, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, and a half teaspoon of baking soda. We’ll add a fourth teaspoon of salt and cut in six tablespoons of butter with a fork. (I’ve showed y’all that fork trick before, but you can find it on Youtube. Just run a search for Shellie and Cathead Biscuits.)

In a separate bowl, we’ll mix our wet ingredients, two lightly beaten eggs and one and half cups of buttermilk. We’ll fold our wet ingredients into our dry ingredients, mix well, and pour our batter into a hot buttered skillet. Bake until the top is golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. (You should be able to stick a toothpick in the middle and it come out clean.) That’s the cornbread.

Now, we’ll take our day old cornbread over there and get busy making those fabulous croutons. You can experiment with all kinds of seasonings. I’m using Greek seasoning this time. We’ll take our cold cornbread and slice it into 3/4″ to 1″ squares. Then we’ll sprinkle it heavily with Greek seasoning and toss it with three to four tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste! Bake at 400 for about 15 minutes or until they begin to darken. The longer they sit, the crunchier they become. Yum! Those are my Cornbread Croutons, y’all, and they’re good eating from the All Things Southern kitchen to yours~

Hugs,

Shellie