Okay, this is a crazy thing to admit, but until recently, I’ve never tried to make ham and beans. Like, never! I tried making from-scratch baked beans with dried beans once and it was such a disaster that I never tried any other kind of dried bean ever again.
As usual, though, Alton Brown has inspired me. After recently watching his show about dried beans, I thought maybe it was worth a shot. So I gathered all the info that I could find and gave it a try…it was the best ham and beans I’ve ever eaten, and since I normally don’t like beans, that’s pretty good. I mean they were good enough that I would make them again because I wanted them not because I’m trying to save money or because the family wants them. I used a recipe off of allrecipes.com, but I left out the onion in favor of onion powder (we don’t care for onion pieces in our food). Then I thought, “Hey, why not try cornbread from scratch as well!”. It, too, turned out awesome. I just combined the best of a few different recipes and made some incredible cornbread.
First, the pics:
Ham and Beans anyone?
The cornbread in the skillet:
And an individual serving of the cornbread:
Now, it is a rarity in my house that we run out of something simple like butter, but for some reason on this day, we were out. K and I love our butter, so this was a tragedy, but the meal was already made and hot and we ate anyway. K’s comment: “This cornbread is good enough that I actually don’t mind eating it without butter. In fact, without butter I’d give it a 9.5 (out of 10) and with butter, I bet it’s an 11!”
This was way better than Jiffy, folks, and I love Jiffy Cornbread!
The ham and beans recipe is:
1 pound dry great Northern beans
1/2 pound cooked ham, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried parsley
Rinse beans in a large pot; discard shriveled beans and any small stones. Add 8 cups of cold water. Let stand overnight or at least 8 hours. Drain and rinse beans.
Return beans to pot and add ham, onion, brown sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne and parsley and water to cover. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beans are tender. Add more water if necessary during cooking time.
What I actually did was put the beans in the slow cooker on low for like 12 hours. Perfection!
The cornbread recipe is as follows:
Jessica’s Sweet Cornbread
1 c. flour
1 c. yellow cornmeal
2/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 c. plus 2 tsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla
Preparation:
In a small bowl, soak 1 c. cornmeal in 1 c. milk for 15 minutes without stirring. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 9 to 12 inch round pan (I use cast iron for even heating). In large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder with whisk. Stir in eggs, cornmeal and milk mixture, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Batter will be slightly lumpy, that’s okay. Pour into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of cornbread comes out clean.
This looks nice, thanks for the recipe!
Yasmeen
http://www.ywrites.wordpress.com
P.S
i’m also into cooking and food, so please feel free to check out my site
Woohoo!! I’m out of butter too (tomorrow’s payday, thank goodness!) so when I googled “cornbread recipe without butter”…..there you were!! Thanks for posting this!! We’re having chili and cornbread (and a side salad) for dinner!
I have some recipes on my blog as well if you are interested!
Thank you!!!!
Okay, that cornbread was a HUGE hit! Thanks for the recipe! I’ll be back for more!
Hey thanks for the cornbread recipe! Can’t get Jiffy where I live — but this is WAY better anyway. Only thing — did you preheat the skillet in the oven before pouring in the batter? I had to bake mine (using an enamel cast iron casserole) for an hour before it was cooked through! I wonder if I should have preheated the pan first. It was still stunning though. And you’re right, it doesn’t need butter, and I put butter on everything.
Thanks again!
[...] (as evidenced by my blog counter,) everyone thinks of ham and beans. This is a great idea, especially using the hambone up as [...]
Nope, didn’t preheat, but my kitchen is usually warm, so I guess if your cast-iron is cold, you might want to preheat on low or something.
Thanks for your help – I learned from my Daddy – instead of using milk in the cornbread mix – use water (you can go half in half). It is much better – a little less sweet so you can taste the corn! I use a cast iron skillet – warm a little “olive oil” instead of veggie oil or butter – I try to be kinda healthy hillbilly
If you like jiffy cornbread try one pkg jiffy cornbread and one pkg jiffy yellow cake mix. mix together with all the ingredients to make both. It tastes just like Boston Market cornbread!
I just have to let you know that I make this dish all the time and I love it…so does my very picky family!
[...] My cornbread recipe can be found here [...]
When you put this in the slow cooker, had you already let the beans soak overnight?
Yes, I guess I should’ve said that, the soaking is necessary no matter which method you use! Thanks for the question.
I am going to make this tomorrow and I was wondering if you still cover everything with water in the crock pot. I am new to crock pot cooking and I am not sure how much liquid is needed! Thanks for the recipes they look delicious!!
Yes, you still cover with water just like the recipe says…that is so that the beans can absorb a lot of the liquid and not dry out. Hope that helps!
I have NEVER had nor made ham and beans in my life (but I am def. a cornbread lover lol) And I have been doing the try new things. Mom used to tell me about how Grams used to make Ham and Beans when times were tight (and this was depression times so that was a lot with 7 kids)I decided to try it. I have 2 very picky kids. I would like to report after making YOUR recipie that the kids wanted MORE then I had ready! That is the first time a new recipie has ever flown that well in this house! Congrats to you!