Mix up your side dish routine at breakfast, lunch, or dinner with this unique cornbread recipe! Bake cornbread biscuits in a cast iron skillet and serve with chili or any other meal! Vegetarian.
In a hurry? Click here to jump straight to the recipe!
You can’t really go wrong by putting things in skillets.
Especially when the thing in the skillet is a glorious mash-up of rosemary, thyme, cornbread, and buttery biscuit-y goodness.
Comfort food is totally in order today, because Kyle and I are officially moved out of our apartment! Which would be great, except for now we have a ten day wait before we can get into the NEW apartment, which means literally everything we own is in a truck that’s sitting at a friend’s house while we live out of suitcases in a short-term sublet. I can’t even get in to the sublet place until late this afternoon, but we had to be out of our old apartment this morning, so I’m basically killing the whole day by bouncing from one coffee shop to another and attempting to get some work done while I’m temporarily homeless. Moving sucks! I know it’ll be worth it, because the new place is cheaper and nicer than where we were – and it has a DISHWASHER, OMG – but I’m just ready for the whole process to be over.
Fortunately, Ithaca has some great coffee places and restaurants (hellloooooo, rosemary salt bagels!) with free wi-fi, so I can salvage some productive-ness today while I’m in between the old apartment and the new sublet. Plus, free wi-fi means I get to tell you about these biscuits! WINNING.
This particular dish went through a lot more recipe testing iterations than most of the food on Life As A Strawberry, mostly because I just kept changing my mind.
I want rosemary!
Wait, no I don’t.
I want them to be cookie sheet biscuits!
No, I don’t – I want them to be skillet biscuits!
Wait, I DO want rosemary!
Why aren’t they fluffy enough?
Oh, probably because the baking soda and baking powder are still sitting on the counter instead of being in the biscuits.
Am I really sure I want these to be biscuits? I think so.
Or maybe scones! No, biscuits.
Definitely biscuits.
Ms. Indecisive, reporting for duty.
And then, of course, I had even more issues once I’d settled on the perfect recipe version. Issues like, “whoops, I ate them all before I could take any pictures,” or starting the recipe at 10:00pm and (duh) being too tired to deal with cameras and artificial lighting
You’d think after doing that to myself a million times I would have learned by lesson. But you would be wrong.
Basically, it was a bit of a long process to get these skillet herbed cornbread biscuits to you.
Also, completely unrelated (but equally important), how cute is this tiny honey jar? It came with a cup of tea I got at a restaurant once, so naturally I snapped it up to use for pictures.
Being a food blogger is awesome, because it gives me an excuse to collect tiny, adorable, completely unnecessary things without just being a hoarder.
But I digress. These biscuits! Make them! And then eat them with Black Bean, Corn, and Turkey Chili, or some of this barbecue pulled pork, or some of this ROOT BEER pulled pork, or some insanely good Peach Whiskey Chili for maximum enjoyment. You could also just shovel them into your face with a bit of butter and honey as soon as they’re out of the oven, though. It’s all totally acceptable.
- 1.5 cups flour, divided
- ¾ cup cornmeal
- 4 tsp. baking powder
- ¼ tsp. baking soda
- 1.5 tsp. salt
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 tsp. dried thyme
- 1 tsp. dried rosemary
- 6 Tbsp. COLD unsalted butter, cubed
- ½ cup cooked sweet corn kernels (optional; if you aren't going to eat the biscuits right away skip the corn kernels because they can dry out and taste chewy after a day or two on the counter)
- 1 cup milk
- Combine 1.25 cups of the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, thyme, and rosemary in a large mixing bowl.
- Cut the butter into the flour mixture - basically, just quickly rub the butter into the flour with your hands - until the mixture is coarse and resembles cornmeal.
- Stir milk and corn kernels (if you're using them) into mixture. Turn dough out onto a floured cutting board and knead the rest of the flour (1/4 cup) into the dough until it is no longer sticky. (You may need to use a bit more flour if the dough is especially sticky).
- Pat the dough out to about ½ inch thickness and cut into 2-inch rounds with a biscuit cutter.
- Lightly grease a large cast-iron skillet and arrange cut biscuits in a single layer. Give them a little breathing room, because they'll rise quite a bit in the oven. Depending on the size of your skillet, you may need to bake in two batches or bake some of the biscuits on a separate baking sheet. My skillet is about 8 inches in diameter and doesn't quite fit all of the biscuits, so I bake in two batches.
- Bake at 450 degrees fahrenheit for 13-16 minutes until biscuits are lightly browned. Serve warm with butter and a bit of honey. They go great with this Corn & Black Bean Turkey Chili!
Jesse, I love following your blog and all that you do from writing, photography, cooking, and having a great sense of humor. I don’t always comment, but believe me, I’m always reading your awesome blogs. I have tried your great recipes and they turn out very good. Keep up the great work!
Happy to hear you’ll be moving into a nice home and location.
Thank you so much, Queenie! We are into our new apartment now and loving it 🙂 Thank you for reading – I’m so happy you enjoy the blog!